


COSY • CORNER • SERIES 



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Book .(L, ^.3-2*- 

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A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 











“ THE task of putting the bicycle in order 
LASTED UNTIL THE TEA-BELL RANG.” 


( See page 121) 


Coso Corner Series 

A SEVENTH 
DAUGHTER 


By 

Grace Wickham Curran 


Illustrated by 

Diantha W. Horne 



Boston 

L. C. Page & Company 
1904. 





the library of 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copies Received 

JUL 6 1903 


Q Copyright Entry 

£ - ( 0 [ 0 3 

\SSL) G- XXc. No. 

L 3 3 k 

COPY B. 


cO 



Copyright , /90J 
By L. C. Page & Company 

(incorporated) 

^ 4 // rights reserved 




* published, June, 1903 

c * < * 

< < C <• 1 * 



Colonfal $regg 

Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. 
Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 


Co Jftot&er 




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CHAPTER PAGE 

I. In Disgrace 13 

II. A Discovery 21 

III. Locating Lost Treasure ... 34 

IV. In Conference 46 

V. Planting Seeds of Magic ... 59 

VI. The First-Fruits of Harvest. . 74 

VII. Sunshine after Rain .... 88 

VIII. The Visit of the Tin Peddler . 102 

IX. Mysteries 118 

X. The Triumph of Magic . . . 127 



PAGE 


“ The task of putting the bicycle in 

ORDER LASTED UNTIL THE TEA -BELL 
rang ” {See page 121) . . . Frontispiece 

“Vigorously discussing Polly” . . . 1 7 

“ ‘ I’M A SEVENTH DAUGHTER MYSELF,’ THOUGHT 

Polly ” 26 

“ SHE BEGAN HER SLOW PROGRESS TOWARD THE 

river” ........ 39 

“‘NOW, YOUNG LADY, GIVE ME AN EXPLANA- 
TION OF YOUR CONDUCT’”. . . -51 

“ ‘ This seems more sensible,’ said Polly ” . 67 

“Joyful news came from Ted, one morn- 
ing” 77 

“‘Oh, do let’s each buy a tin cup’”. . 103 

‘“I’m just broken-hearted, Miss Polly, I 

am’” 109 

“She was able to . . . explore to the very 

BOTTOM OF THE DEEP SIDE” . . -134 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


CHAPTER I. 

IN DISGRACE 

Polly Andrews had been sent to bed in 
disgrace in the middle of the afternoon. 

This was mortifying, since Polly consid- 
ered herself quite too old for such childish 
punishment, but more than that, it was incon- 
venient, for this was the last day of Cousin 
Ted’s holidays, and, as the older girls claimed 
him for a charade party in the evening, he 
had promised to devote the whole afternoon 
to Polly and the development of one of the 
numerous schemes which they two always had 
laid up waiting in goodly store. 

Polly and Ted were fast friends. “Ted 
the Tall ” and “ Polly the Plump ” Anne had 


14 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


christened them, and they did present a con- 
trast, to be sure, — Ted with his almost six 
feet, dark hair, and clear gray eyes, and short, 
dumpling-like Polly, whose yellow curls and 
brown eyes danced in unison with the smiles 
that dimpled in and out of the corners of her 
mouth. 

“ Why is it,” she had asked one day, “ that 
I have two names, and, though my really and 
truly one is Marietta, every one calls me 
Polly?” 

And Ted, who at the time was much inter- 
ested in the study of botany, had replied, 

“ IPs because you are a kind of wild flower, 
Polly. Marietta is your scientific name, down 
in the books, to connect you with your family, 
it being your grandmother’s name, but your 
common name, which seems to describe your 
roly-poly person, is the one by which you are 
always called.” 

Though Polly was quite as often in disgrace 
as out, and, perhaps because of that fact, a 
strong bond of sympathy held between these 
two. For, in spite of Ted’s sophomoric dig- 
nity, vivid memories of a turbulent boyhood, 
which had not been altogether guiltless, lin- 


IN DISGRACE 


15 


gered in his mind and prompted the chari- 
table opinion, which he often expressed, that, 
on the whole, Polly was not a “ bad fellow.” 
It is true that, from a conventional stand- 
point, Polly’s education had been shamefully 
neglected. She cared not at all to sit at her 
mother’s knee, after the manner of prim and 
proper little maids, and take countless multi- 
tudes of tiny stitches in endless lines of towel 
hems, and she had shown little tendency 
toward the more exciting feminine occupa- 
tion of concocting party gowns for dolls out 
of scraps of silk and lace. Maternal instincts 
had not been entirely left out of her make-up, 
however, and a dumpy, plain-featured infant, 
gowned in practical gingham, had for years 
rested its rubber ringlet rolls upon her arm 
at night. But this was a secret, and daytime 
was too precious to be wasted in such wise, 
for were there not trees to climb, and fields 
to explore, to say nothing of countless fairy- 
tales and books of adventure to be read and 
re-read ? 

The older girls shook their heads over the 
glaring faults in the system of Polly’s up- 
bringing, quite different from that of their 


1 6 A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 

own, but “ Doctor Papa,” who could be stub- 
born on occasion, though usually the mildest 
of men, had said, 

“Let my baby alone. There are enough 
of you older ones to do the housework and 
the family sewing. Since I have no sons, 
let me have at least a ‘ tomboy.’ ” 

And so a “ tomboy ” she was, quite as heed- 
less and careless and reckless as a real boy, 
and the despair of her six anxious sisters. 

Those of the family who happened to be at 
home on this September afternoon had been 
vigorously discussing Polly for the last ten 
minutes down in the sitting-room. Gentle 
sister Nell, aged nineteen, seemed somewhat 
inclined to take Polly’s part, though she had 
been a model of propriety in her own child- 
hood. But Aggie, who still called herself six- 
teen, though her seventeenth birthday was due 
in a week, was very positive in her statements. 

“ I do think, mother, she is the most mis- 
chievous child that ever lived. And just be- 
cause she’s the baby, we all spoil her. But 
something ought to be done to cure her of 
meddling and carelessness. She never remem- 
bers where she leaves things, and she hasn’t 




IN DISGRACE 


19 


the first notion of order. Here I am ready to 
start to-morrow morning, bright and early, 
to join that house-party, and my new lor- 
gnette chain is missing and can’t be found 
anywhere. It’s too vexing for anything ! ” 

“ Well, you ought to give her credit for 
being honest, anyway,” broke in impetuous 
Anne, one of the twins ; “ if you ever came 
at me as fiercely as you did at her, Aggie, I 
should certainly be tempted to tell you a fib.” 

“ Well — well,” said cousin Ted, who had 
not spoken before, “ Aunt Emmie has suc- 
cumbed to popular opinion and sent her to bed, 
though I just know she is thinking already 
how to arrange cup custards and tarts on her 
supper tray,” and he gave the hand of his 
aunt, by whose side he sat, an affectionate 
little squeeze. “ Polly’s the baby, and of 
course she’s spoiled, but, as I have often said 
before, she’s not a * bad fellow,’ and I’m going 
up and give her this circus poster I found on 
the front steps as I came in. I know it will 
comfort her in her forced retirement from 
society to look at these trapeze performers and 
elephants doing ‘ stunts ’ on their hind legs. 
And I’m going to give her a hint about those 


20 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


tarts, too, auntie,” he called back, as his long 
legs took him up the stairs three at a time. 

“ There, you let Ted spoil her, too. Much 
good it will do to send her to bed, unless you 
put Ted in irons at the same time. However, 
there’s no use crying over 4 spilt milk.’ I’ll 
have to go without my chain. But I did want 
to show it to the girls — it’s such a beauty ! ” 
and Aggie arose and betook herself with her 
magazine to the porch hammock. 


CHAPTER II. 

A DISCOVERY 

This porch, with its mat of clematis vines, 
belonged to a modest frame house set back 
from one of the streets of a small manufac- 
turing town. The yard at the back sloped 
to a thread of a creek, which wandered 
through the town, and which Polly dignified 
by the name of “ river.” The location was 
not particularly desirable, and the house was 
not one to attract attention for either size 
or beauty, except when the clematis vines 
hung out their purple banner of glory. Both 
house and yard had fairly overflowed when 
the children were babies, but, though Doctor 
Andrews's practice was large, considering the 
size of the town, the wants of the household 
had been so numerous that he had never seen 
the time when he could move his family to 
a more commodious home. 


21 


22 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


To Doctor and Mrs. Andrews, their quar- 
ters seemed especially cramped, for their early 
married life, during the babyhood of Marian 
and Clara, the two daughters now married 
and gone away, had been passed in Mrs. An- 
drews’s childhood home with old Uncle David 
Lindon, who had been a father to his wife’s 
five orphan nieces. Mrs. Andrews was the 
youngest of these nieces, and had taken a 
daughter’s tender care of the old man. It 
was supposed in the family that Uncle David 
had intended to leave to this youngest and 
favourite niece the old home, a fine old house 
with a row of Ionic pillars across its front, 
surrounded by a noble sweep of lawn, and 
sheltered by a group of ancient elms. He 
had little else to leave, when he died suddenly 
at the age of eighty-seven, but, as there was 
no will, the property had passed into the hands 
of his nephew, a rich manufacturer in a neigh- 
bouring city, who had no interest in the place 
except for what it might bring him. 

Real estate had been dull in the small town, 
and the property had not gone out of his 
hands. The house had been let to one and 
another, and now for eight years had been 


A DISCOVERY 


23 


occupied as a boarding-house. Mrs. An- 
drews’s heart still ached whenever she passed 
the place and noted the general look of dreari- 
ness which only the precincts of a boarding- 
house can assume. For a time, it had been 
the doctor’s hope to buy back for his wife her 
girlhood home, but the little girls had arrived 
so rapidly in his own home that he had long 
since given up the idea. The family some- 
times talked of it in a vague way, and it was 
not uncommon to hear one of the younger 
ones remark, “ When we buy the big house, 
I shall do so and so.” 

Inadequate as was the space in the Andrews 
house, it was one of those delightful homes 
where room can always be found for a cousin 
or two more or less. A cot-bed set up here, 
a folding-bed let down there, a screen or two, 
and more than all else a cheery spirit, never 
irritated by a little crowding, made it a spot 
dearly loved by a wide and happy circle of 
cousins. As Ted’s father was an officer in 
the army, and stationed in a far-away West- 
ern post, the doors were set wide open for 
Ted’s reception, and he was hailed with joy 


24 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


by this crowd of girl cousins whenever holi- 
days set him free. 

On this afternoon, when he arrived at the 
door of Polly’s little room, he found a very 
red-eyed, flushed, and tear-stained little face 
muffled under the bedclothes, and not even 
the casual mention of tarts, nor the sight of 
the circus poster, sufficed to bring forth a 
smile. 

“ Say, Polly, old girl, it’s hard lines, isn’t 
it? I’ve been there myself, you know, in bed 
in the middle of the day, I mean. And I want 
to help you, so if you can just put your thinker 
to work, and remember where you put that 
chain, why, I’ll go and get it, and perhaps 
Aggie will forgive you in time for you to 
come down to supper.” 

“ But, Ted, I just can 9 1 remember. I’ve 
tried and tried. It did look so pretty and 
shiny over my pink dress that I couldn’t help 
trying it on, but I went so many places and 
did so many things, I can’t remember. I wore 
it around my neck and I made a belt of it, 
and I twisted it on my arm for a bracelet, and 
played I was an Egyptian princess, walking 
by the river-side, like the one that pulled little 


A DISCOVERY 


25 


baby Moses out of the bulrushes, and I had 
it on my head for a crown, and, oh, lots of 
things, but I can’t remember where I put it 
when I got through.” And here she sobbed 
afresh, and covered her eyes with the edge 
of the sheet, already very damp and rumpled. 

But after Ted had patted and kissed her, 
and gone down-stairs, she languidly picked up 
the circus poster and looked it over. The ele- 
phants seemed to have no power to fan the 
small spark of comfort that Ted had kindled 
in her heart, but after a little she became in- 
terested in reading out loud the list of per- 
formances and attractions, printed in large, 
square letters across the page : “ The Bearded 
Woman,” “ The Living Skeleton,” “ Senorita, 
the Doll-Lady,” and “ Elola, the Sorceress, 
Seventh Daughter of a Seventh Daughter, 
reveals secrets* locates lost treasures, foretells 
the future,” etc., etc. 

She spent some time in making out all the 
remarkable qualities of these various prodi- 
gies. As she read them over a second time 
1 to make the meaning more clear, her attention 
'was caught by the phrases, “ Seventh Daugh- 
ter ” and “ locates lost treasures.” 


2 6 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


“ I’m a seventh daughter myself,” thought 
Polly, and from out the recesses of her brain 
there popped the remembrance of that very 
phrase, “ seventh daughter of a seventh daugh- 



ter,” spoken by her father once long ago, when 
she was a very little girl, and he had taken 
her on his knee and introduced her to a gen- 
tleman, an old friend whom he and mother 
had known in their childhood. The gentleman 


A DISCOVERY 


27 


himself had repeated the words, as he had 
placed his hand on her curls, and had added 
in a questioning voice, “ Has she shown any 
magical propensities ? ” 

Polly remembered those last two words, be- 
cause of a quaint habit of hers from babyhood 
of repeating the last words of sentences spoken 
by those around her. Her elders, amused by 
this little trick, used purposely to wind up 
their sentences with words of astonishing 
length and difficult to pronounce, in order 
to hear her comical attempts at mastering 
them. She had not repeated the words aloud 
on that occasion, as there was “ company ” 
present, but she had whispered them to her- 
self, and they now came back to her mind 
clearly. She remembered, too, that her father 
had laughed and said, “ Propensities, yes, 
decided ones, but not magical. ,, 

“ A seventh daughter of a seventh daugh- 
ter ” She read the words over again. Why, 
yes, to be sure, she herself was a seventh 
daughter, but — so was mother ! Four dearly 
beloved aunties she knew well, and mother 
had often told of the two sisters who died 
in one day of scarlet fever before mother even 


28 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


was born. Her idea as to the meaning of 
the word “ propensity ” was rather vague, but 
she knew exactly what “ magical ” meant. 

What a delightful idea! A seventh daugh- 
ter of a seventh daughter was heiress then to 
“ magical propensities/’ whatever they were, 
and nobody had ever told her of it! 

She sat straight up in bed, her former mis- 
ery quite obliterated by the delicious sense of 
excitement which took possession of her. She 
clutched the poster in both hands, and read 
it over again carefully, in order to find out 
as much as she could of what things she her- 
self might be able to do. 

“ It’s just because I didn’t know about it 
before that I haven’t been able to do all these 
things. 4 Locates lost treasure ’ — h’m — 
that’s Aggie’s chain. I suppose I ought to 
know just where to go to find it, with my eyes 
shut even. If I could only go to see that 
‘ seventh daughter ’ at the circus, and have a 
talk with her, she might tell me how to go at 
it, but mother wouldn’t let me talk to circus 
people, I know, and anyway, I’d rather find 
out how to do it myself. I’ll think and think, 
and perhaps it will come to me all of a sud- 


A DISCOVERY 


2 9 


den, and how surprised the family will be 
when I go about working magic on them! I 
always have wished I was a princess in dis- 
guise or something splendid like that, and now 
this is better than being a princess even. Anne 
and Frances can’t go off and talk secrets any 
more with that 4 stuck-up ’ friend of theirs, 
Belle Watson, who says, ‘ Dear me, how in- 
quisitive children are ! ’ meaning me, when 
they’re only two years older than I am any- 
way. I’ll stand up in front of them so digni- 
fied and make a gesture with my hand — so ” 
— flinging a small hand out in the air — “ and 
say, coldly, 4 The innermost thoughts of your 
minds are in my possession,’ and then I’ll tell 
them everything they’re thinking about, and 
they’ll be so afraid of me they’ll just turn pale 
with horror, and let me go every place I want 
to with them.” 

The afternoon, which had looked so dismal 
and long, passed with astonishing rapidity, 
as Polly went in imagination from one mag- 
nificent exploit to another. 

Frances, who had been spending the after- 
noon with her friend Belle, came in just at 
supper-time, and was asked to take Polly’s 


3o 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


tray up-stairs. She was much surprised to 
find propped up against the pillows a very 
cheerful young person, who addressed her in a 
patronising way rather unexpected from one 
supposed to be overwhelmed with disgrace. 
She remarked, as she came into the dining- 
room, 

“ I don’t know, mother, what you sent Polly 
to bed for, but I don’t think it has been any 
punishment. She looked as if she had just 
received a splendid gift, and sat up in bed 
like a queen, ordering me in the grandest way 
where to put her tray.” 

“ The circus poster has been getting in its 
work,” laughed Ted. “ I knew it would com- 
fort her.” 

“ I trust that resolutions to do better in 
the future have strengthened her spirits,” 
spoke up Aggie. 

“ Well,” said Anne, “ it may be the poster, 
but I don’t think it’s ‘ good resolutions.’ I 
went up in my room for a book awhile ago, 
and I heard her telling herself stories out loud. 
She has probably been pretending she is a 
queen or something of the kind, and looked 
upon you, Fan, when you brought in her sup- 


A DISCOVERY 


3i 


per, as a maid in waiting or a lady of the 
royal bedchamber.” 

“ I’m glad the poor child was able to find 
some amusement,” said mother. “ It seemed 
such a pity to send her to bed this lovely 
afternoon. Yes, yes, I know, Aggie,” as 
Aggie opened her mouth to speak, “ she de- 
served it, and I have kept away all the after- 
noon, for fear if I went up and saw her sor- 
rowful little face I would forgive her and let 
her get up.” 

“ Her face is anything but sorrowful now. 
Her eyes look like two stars,” said Frances, 
and then the conversation drifted away to the 
coming charade party, and all were soon busy 
suggesting words for acting. 

“ Give her my love, Aunt Emmie,” said 
Ted, as he saw Polly’s mother slip away after 
supper in the direction of the stairway. 

Polly’s appetite was a perfectly healthy and 
normal one, and the eating of her supper had 
calmed her excitement of the afternoon, so that 
she listened to her mother’s quiet words with 
a properly penitent air. 

“ I will truly try to be good, you blessed 
old mommie, and learn to be careful, and I 


32 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


won’t touch anybody’s things without permis- 
sion ever again.” 

Then, with her discovery of the afternoon 
in mind, she declared : 

“ I’m going to be so good that you’ll be 
surprised. I’ll always know where everything 
is, and never lose anything again in my life.” 

“ Dear child, I’m glad you are sorry and 
want to do better, but don’t boast. It takes 
a long time to learn order and carefulness, and 
we won’t expect you to be perfect in a min- 
ute.” 

Mrs. Andrews had brought up with her 
Polly’s favourite book of fairy-tales, and she 
now sat down by the window and began read- 
ing aloud, while Polly lay quietly watching 
the last pink sun-rays on the white muslin 
window curtain, and listening both to the 
story and to a robin outside on an apple-tree, 
who, though it was now September, was re- 
minding himself in a few cheery notes of the 
happy spring and busy summer he had had. 

Mother had gone down-stairs, the twilight 
had deepened into night, when Polly, drifting 
away into sleep, was awakened by a kiss from 
Aggie, whose sense of justice had been over- 


A DISCOVERY 


33 


come by loving compunctions for the small 
sister. She was dressed ready for the party, 
and now stooped over Polly, saying, 

“ Don’t worry too much about the chain, 
dear. We’ll find it some day.” 

Polly roused up long enough to reply, 

“ Pm going to find your chain, Aggie, and 
you’ll forgive me, won’t you? How perfectly 
beautiful you look in that blue dress ! I wish 1 
were old enough to go to parties.” 


CHAPTER III. 


LOCATING LOST TREASURE 

Polly was awakened by the murmur of 
voices in the next room and an occasional sub- 
dued giggle. 

“ The girls are home from their party,” she 
thought. 

It seemed to her to be very late, but was not 
really so, for Mrs. Andrews, kind and indul- 
gent though she always was, had insisted that 
half-past ten was late enough for these daugh- 
ters in their teens to play charades, even at 
a neighbour’s house. 

The world outside was flooded with moon- 
light, and Polly’s little room was very bright. 
It may have been that which prevented her 
from dropping to sleep again at once, or it may 
have been the swift thought of remembrance 
that she was a “ seventh daughter.” She cer- 
tainly became very wide awake, and the more 
34 


LOCATING LOST TREASURE 


35 


she tried to go to sleep, the more difficult it 
grew. All the imaginings of the afternoon re- 
turned, intensified by her sleepless condition, 
and she fell to wondering as to the secret of 
the magic power which belonged to her by 
rights, but which she could not yet grasp. 

“ Perhaps I’m under some enchantment,” 
she thought. “ Some dreadful old giant or 
witch didn’t want me to know my power, and 
has cast a spell over me. If I only knew some 
way to break it ! Let — me — think. Now I 
wonder,” she pondered, “ whether some of 
those things we did last Hallowe’en would 
work. They dared me to go at twelve o’clock 
at night down to the river, walking backward 
all the way with a candle and a mirror in my 
hand. The girls said that when I reached the 
river-bank, I would see my future lover looking 
over my shoulder in the 1 glass. I tried it, but it 
was so dark I ran into the quince-bush and 
scratched myself. It’s moonlight now, perhaps 
I could get there, but I don’t think I need 
the glass, for I’m sure I don’t want to see 
anybody’s face. I do believe that, if I should 
do all those things and say over some words, 
the spell would shiver all to little pieces 


3 6 A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 

and I would be free. I don’t know any en- 
chantment words, though, except what Little 
Two Eyes said to bring the table with some- 
thing to eat. It ought to be done at midnight, 
too. I wonder if it’s most midnight now.” 

Getting out of bed, she stole carefully to 
the dressing-table, where stood the little Dres- 
den china clock, her “ very dearest ” birthday 
present, which Doctor Papa had given her 
as a reward for being ready for breakfast 
every morning for two weeks. Holding it up 
in the moonlight, she saw that the hands 
pointed to five minutes after eleven. 

“ There’s nearly an hour till midnight, but 
I’m not a bit sleepy, and I had better wait 
anyway till the girls are fast asleep, or they 
won’t let me go.” 

So, after laying out on a chair beside the 
bed, all ready to slip on, her pink eiderdown 
dressing-gown and pink crocheted slippers, 
she jumped back into bed to wait. 

Perhaps old Father Time gets a bit sleepy 
himself in the middle of the night, and lets 
the minutes drag. At any rate, they never 
fly then as they seem to do at some other 
times. Polly thought the girls never would 


LOCATING LOST TREASURE 


37 


go to sleep. All would be quiet for a time, and 
then the sound of a faint whisper, followed 
by an explosive little giggle, would float across 
the hall from the room shared by Anne and 
Frances. Then would come a gentle admon- 
ishing whisper from Nell’s and Aggy’s room, 
“ Sh, girls, don’t, you’ll wake up father and 
mother.” Once Polly heard a door creak, and 
what sounded like a foot on the stairs, but 
she decided later that she must have been 
mistaken. 

The cosy comfort of her bed had begun 
finally to overcome her waking senses, when 
far away down-stairs in the dining-room she 
heard the clock begin to strike. Rubbing her 
eyes, she sat up, and in a moment more was 
out on the floor and arrayed for her expe- 
dition. Catching up her little hand-mirror 
and a candlestick from the bedside table, she 
slipped out of her room and started down- 
stairs. 

“ I don’t really need this candle,” she 
thought, “ it’s such bright moonlight, but I 
s’pose I ought to have everything with me 
to make things work right, so I’ll take them 
along. I don’t think it’s necessary, though, to 


38 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


look in the glass,” and she gave a little shiver, 
as she thought of the horrid possibility of con- 
fronting in her own mirror something other 
than the pink-cheeked, curl-framed face she 
was used to finding there. 

The operation of getting down-stairs un- 
heard was a difficult One. Every stair upon 
which she set foot responded with what seemed 
to her anxious ears startling and prolonged 
shrieks of remonstrance. But all remained 
still above stairs, and even mother, who, as 
Polly said, “ slept only with her eyes and not 
with her ears,” did not waken as the little 
slippered feet passed her door. 

Polly let herself out by the side door far- 
thest removed from “ mother’s room,” and 
then stopped to light her candle. 

“ I won’t begin to walk backward till I 
get to the back porch, for, if I hadn’t been 
afraid mother would hear me open that squeak- 
ing kitchen door, I’d have gone out that way.” 

When, therefore, she reached the spot where 
the path from the side door joined the one 
leading to the kitchen, she turned resolutely 
around, and, with her lighted candle, which 
flickered and sputtered a good deal, held high 


LOCATING LOST TREASURE 


39 


in one hand, and her hand-mirror, with back 
turned uppermost, grasped in the other, she 
began her slow progress toward the river. 



The moonlight was so bright that she could 
see plainly the path as it retreated from her, 
and as far as that conducted her she felt con- 
fident and perfectly safe. She had scarcely no- 
ticed in daylight, however, that the path ceased 
or was overgrown with grass after it passed the 
currant bushes and the grape-arbour. With the 


40 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


shadows cast by the moon, things assumed an 
unaccustomed aspect, and just as she began 
to wonder whether there were three or four 
quince bushes to pass before you came to the 
right place to turn to reach the little gate at 
the foot of the garden, a narrow strip of cloud 
passed over the face of the moon, and dark- 
ness fell upon Polly’s little familiar world. 

It is astonishing how long it sometimes 
takes a very tiny scrap of cloud to float out 
of the way, especially if one is in a hurry and 
beginning to be a little bit puzzled and fright- 
ened. But float away it finally did, and Polly 
breathed a sigh of relief as she found herself 
at the gate. Reaching behind her with the 
hand which bore the mirror, she lifted the latch 
and passed through. She was near the river 
now, but she was obliged to go more slowly, for 
the ground sloped here and was rather uneven. 
Behind her she could hear the soft murmur of 
the water as it broke over a little group of 
hindering stones and pebbles. 

“ It must be time now to say the enchant- 
ment. Let me think, how do the words 
go? Perhaps I had better say the witches' 


LOCATING LOST TREASURE 


41 


spell, too, that Cousin Ted is always quoting, 
just to make sure.” 

Becoming interested in mentally rehearsing 
the words before saying them aloud, she did 
not notice that she was continuing to step 
backward at the same time, nor did she real- 
ise how perilously near the edge of the 
stream she stood when, finally pausing, she 
began to chant aloud in a somewhat quaver- 
ing voice: 

“ 1 Bleat, my little goat, bleat, 

Cover the table with something to eat.’ ” 

A pause, and then she continued in a 
firmer and louder tone : 

“ ‘ Double, double, toil and trouble, 

Fire burn and caldron bubble.’ ” 

Finishing this, she started in upon the 
second of little Two Eyes’ charms : 

“ ‘ Bleat, bleat, my little goat, I pray,’ ” 

when, leaning a trifle backward, she lost her 
balance, her foot slipped as she tried to steady 
herself, and she fell plump into the little 
stream. 

It was not deep enough to do any harm be- 
yond wetting her, but she was thoroughly 


42 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


frightened and considerably shaken up. In 
the act of falling she had tried to regain her 
foothold, and dropping both candle and mir- 
ror, with her free hands she had clutched at 
the grass and mud which bordered the creek. 
In her startled condition she did not notice 
that her hand had struck something of a dif- 
ferent texture from either mud or grass, but 
as she looked about in her attempts to disen- 
tangle her feet from the long folds of her 
pink wrapper, now in a sad condition, her eyes 
caught a gleam from something which reflected 
back the moonlight to her surprised gaze. 

“ Aggie’s chain ! ” she gasped. “ The 
charm did work, and I have found it. Why, 
of course, I must have dropped it when I was 
walking here with it on my arm for a brace- 
let. I remember I heard Ted’s little dog 
barking and ran to see if Ted himself had come 
back from the ball game. Oh, how splendid ! ” 
she exclaimed aloud. 

“ ‘ By the pricking of my thumbs, 

Something wicked this way comes,’ ” 

broke in a deep masculine voice at this point, 
“ or rather, there seems to be something wicked 


LOCATING LOST TREASURE 


43 


already here. Polly Andrews ! what on earth 
are you doing in the river at this time of 
night? Trying to commit suicide because you 
were sent to bed in the daytime ? ” 

“Oh, Ted, is that you? Isn’t this splen- 
did?” 

“ Splendid ! good gracious, Polly, what a 
girl you are! Now I shouldn’t call it splendid 
to take a ducking in the night, leastways if I 
had on my most especially becoming pink 
wrapper. Here, let me pull you out of that, 
and then you tell me all about it. I couldn’t 
sleep myself and came down to bask in the 
moonlight on the front porch. I was thirsty 
and went out to the well to pump a fresh pail 
of water, when I saw the queerest firefly I 
ever beheld dancing around down here. I 
dropped the bucket and came down to the gate 
just in time to hear you declaiming ‘ Toil and 
trouble.’ I should think so! Your mother 
will think so, too, I imagine, when she tries to 
get the mud off this gown of yours.” 

“ But here’s Aggie’s chain, Ted, don’t you 
see? ” and Polly held it up before him. 

“You don’t say so! Was that what you 
were diving for?” 


44 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


“ Oh, but Ted, do pay attention ! I said the 
charm and I’ve found it and I’m a seventh 
daughter and — and — ” but here Polly’s teeth 
began to chatter as a chill little evening breeze 
struck her wet garments. 

“ Polly Andrews, you’re to go back to bed 
this very instant, or you’ll have your death of 
cold. What’s all this about * charms ’ and 
‘ seventh daughters ? ’ Don’t you stop a min- 
ute to tell me now, but my train doesn’t leave 
till eleven forty-five in the morning, and we’ll 
have a conference in the parlour immediately 
after breakfast.” 

“ But Ted, Aggie’s train goes at six in the 
morning, and if I shouldn’t wake up how will 
she get her chain ? ” 

“ Here, give it to me. I gather from your 
remarks just before you took the fatal plunge, 
that this chain was produced by magic. I’ll 
see to it that Aggie receives it in a properly 
mysterious way. And now, child, bundle 
yourself to bed at once.” 

Ted, who had been busy all the time he 
talked, now set Polly, candlestick, mirror, and 
all, down on the door-step whither he had 
carried them, and Polly mounted to her room. 


LOCATING LOST TREASURE 


45 


With relieved mind she was soon warm and 
cosily asleep in her bed, and the moon, whose 
beams are somehow invariably mixed up with 
a good deal of magic, looked through the win- 
dow upon this small “ seventh daughter ” and 
cast a spell over her in the form of weird and 
fantastic dreams of future fame and success 
as an enchantress. 


CHAPTER IV. 


IN CONFERENCE 

Breakfast the next morning did not prom- 
ise to be the well-ordered, cheerful, and pleas- 
ant gathering usual in the Andrews household. 
Ordinarily it was the “ nicest ” meal of the 
day, the girls always declared, for Doctor 
Andrews, who never could be sure of his pres- 
ence at dinner or supper, made a point of 
meeting punctually with his wife and daughters 
at the breakfast hour. It was the bright spot 
of his day, he often said, and Mrs. Andrews 
worked with him to make it so. Hurry or 
disorder in the service were never permitted 
at that meal. No left-over adornments from 
the dinner or supper table appeared in the 
bright morning light. The flowers were 
always fresh plucked, with the dew still on 
them if possible. The muffins or toast were 

46 


IN CONFERENCE 


47 


invariably just the right tint of golden brown, 
the omelettes light and hot, the bacon crisp, 
the fruit fresh and cool, and best of all, every 
member of the family tidy in dress and cheer- 
ful in manner. 

But this morning things seemed to have 
conspired to make the “ exception which 
proves the rule.” The doctor himself had 
been out most of the night in attendance upon 
a patient in a critical condition, and as the 
patient was an old and tried friend of the 
family, he found it well-nigh impossible to 
follow his usual custom of throwing off for 
a time professional anxiety. Mrs. Andrews, 
too, looked a little pale and tired, partly from 
her share in the doctor’s anxiety and partly 
because she had arisen at an early hour to 
prepare, herself, Aggie’s early breakfast and 
to start her happily to join the house-party. 
Nell, being Aggie’s roommate, had tumbled out 
of bed and helped in the last arrangements, 
and Anne and Frances, roused by the unusual 
bustle, had come to the top of the stairs to 
call down a “ good-bye,” and had not been 
able to sleep again afterward. 

“ You girls all look as if you had that 


48 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


‘ tired feeling/ ” exclaimed Ted, as he came 
in from his trip to the station, whither he 
had gone with Aggie. 

“ Nothing the matter with Polly, I hope, 
auntie ? ” he questioned, glancing at Polly’s 
empty place. “ Oh, here she comes,” as 
Polly slipped into her chair feeling a little 
uncomfortable as she saw her father’s glance 
rest for a moment on the curls which she had 
brushed so hastily. 

The prevalent gloom began to disappear 
before Ted’s genial presence. He was gaiety 
itself, at least outwardly, and Aunt Emmie 
alone noticed that he stirred his coffee with 
animation but drank little of it, and talked so 
much and so fast that there was no oppor- 
tunity for eating. Only a motherly eye can 
see beneath the brave show which a boy sets 
up on the morning of his departure for col- 
lege. She alone divines the obstinate lump, 
located somewhere between heart and throat, 
that prevents the swallowing of the daintiest 
of viands, and realises the mental picture, 
which floats before his eyes, of dreary dor- 
mitory and hurried meals. 

“ Ted, my boy,” said the doctor, as the 


IN CONFERENCE 


49 


merriment subsided after a story in which 
Ted had described how he and Jack Harris 
had set the broken leg of the dormitory cat, 
much against her will, “ I shall certainly add 
you to my list of tonics. I shall label you 
‘ Excellent in cases of despondency. To be 
taken with meals.’ ” 

“ Oh, papa, do add, ‘ To be shaken well be- 
fore taking,’ ” exclaimed Anne, who was 
blushing furiously over Ted’s account of her 
brilliancy at the charade party, and how she 
had carried off prize after prize in various 
games. 

4 4 Really, uncle, you can’t think how em- 
barrassing it was ! ” he went on. “ One does 
not really mind, you know, apologising for the 
dulness of a relative, but an aggravated case 
of wit like that of Anne’s is overwhelming! 
Every time a fresh prize was handed out some 
one of us had to come forward and say to the 
company, ‘ Never mind this poor child. She’s 
frightfully clever, you know, but she can’t 
help it.’ Why, she must have acquired bric- 
a-brac enough to stock an antique shop. I 
assure you, it was a relief to us all when 
Frances here made such an exhibition of 


50 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


stupidity that she was awarded a consolation 
prize ! ” 

At intervals throughout the meal Ted had 
made great eyes at Polly, and curious gestures 
and mystical signals had passed between 
them. 

“ What is the matter with you, Ted? ” ex- 
claimed Anne, finally. “ Papa, I really don’t 
think it is safe to let him start off to-day. 
Do they have a lunatic ward in your dormi- 
tory? The professors will certainly put you 
in a strait- jacket if you continue such antics.” 

“ Come, Polly,” said he, as they all rose 
from table, “ let us away ! Follow, follow me, 
and don’t any of the rest of you come, either. 
Polly and I are to hold a secret session, a 
‘ consultation,’ if you please, in the front par- 
lour. Matters of grave import have arisen, 
young ladies,” he declaimed, striking the 
attitude of a Roman senator. “ It will be- 
hoove you to treat this occasion with becoming 
dignity,” then suddenly descending to the 
character of a clown, he cut a caper or two, 
tucked Polly under his arm, waltzed down the 
hall, and shutting the parlour door behind 
them, turned the key in the lock. 


IN CONFERENCE 


51 


“ Now, young lady, give me an explanation 
of your conduct.” 

“ Oh, Ted, what did you do with the chain? 
Has Aggie got it? Was she surprised? Tell 
me all about it ! ” 



“ One question at a time, Miss Interroga- 
tion Point. I deliberated some time by the 
light of the moon over the question of how to 
deliver that chain. A happy thought struck 
me. I remembered that yesterday I bought 
choice boxes of bonbons to present as fare- 


52 A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 

well gifts to my esteemed cousins. There! 
I had not meant to tell you so soon, but the 
secret is out. Yes — yours are assorted 
chocolates. I know you can’t endure cocoa- 
nut. Well, I decided to sacrifice my position 
as donor of sweets, in Aggie’s case, for the 
sake of the cause. I opened her box, removed 
the top layer, took out the second layer — I 
may as well confess that I ate them and spoiled 
my appetite for breakfast — then I arranged 
the chain in artistic coils, and replaced the 
top layer. I then retied the box and surrep- 
titiously — that’s a big word, but you can look 
it up in the dictionary — put it in Aggie’s suit- 
case, which she had packed and set out in the 
hall. Now, I argue from my wide knowledge 
of feminine character that Aggie wasn’t on 
her train, five minutes before she felt obliged to 
lift that suit-case down from the rack where 
I put it, and look for a handkerchief or 
hairpin or some other important object. So 
I feel justified in replying to your second 
question, ‘Yes, Aggie has the chain,’ though 
perhaps she doesn’t know it yet, for the 
box is a pretty good sized one, and it being 
so early in the morning she may not have 


IN CONFERENCE 


53 


finished the first layer yet. But you may be 
sure she will before she reaches her destina- 
tion, and I am sure she will never suspect how 
the chain found its way there. Do you think 
so?” 

“ Of course she will know you had some- 
thing to do with it, Ted. No one else ever 
gives us such nice candy boxes as you do. 
You’re just a dear, and I thank you a whole 
lot.” 

“ Oh, don’t mention a little thing like that ! ” 
responded Ted, modestly, “ but tell me what is 
that ‘ seventh daughter ’ business you were 
so incoherently mumbling about last night ? ” 

“ Why, Ted, 7 am a ‘ seventh daughter ’ ! ” 

“ Of course you are, child, no one denies 
it.” 

“ But mother is a * seventh daughter,’ too, 
and so I am a ‘ seventh daughter of a seventh 
daughter.’ Do you know what that means ? ” 
she exclaimed, triumphantly. 

“Why, Polly, so you are! H’m — yes — 
to be sure — good for you, Polly, so you are. 
That’s fine — I see it all now ! ” 

“ You and the rest knew it all the time, 
didn’t you?” Polly questioned, reproachfully. 


54 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


“ I believe you were trying to keep it from me, 
but I found it out from that poster you 
brought me, and I was trying last night to 
break the spell that keeps my power from 
working.” 

“ It’s a mighty lucky thing you didn’t break 
your neck,” rejoined Ted. “ So you were 
working to remove the spell,” he repeated. 
“ But, Polly, old girl, what spell do you think 
is over you ? ” 

“ Ted, dear,” said Polly, her merry face 
quite solemn with the sober lines it had as- 
sumed, “ I know very well what a careless girl 
I am, always losing people’s things and never 
knowing where my own are. The girls are 
always scolding me for it, and even mother 
calls me ‘ heedless ’ lots and lots of times. 
Don’t you remember the other day when papa 
was looking for his fountain pen ? — I had had 
it in my hand just a teeny-weeny minute — he 
said, ‘ What do you suppose possesses the 
child? Is it a spirit of mischief, or is there 
something abnormal about her ? ’ What does 
abnormal mean, anyway, Ted? I was going 
to ask mother, but I forgot it.” 

Ted sat looking thoughtfully at Polly while 


IN CONFERENCE 


55 


she made this confession, and, disregarding 
her last question, made no answer for a few 
moments, while what Polly always called his 
“ think line ” deepened between his eyes. 

“ I see — I see,” he began, slowly ; “ so you 
think that because you are a 4 seventh daughter 
of a seventh daughter ’ you have some magic 
powers, but that some spell has been cast over 
you to keep you from your power — and it is 
the influence of this spell which makes you lose 
the valuable possessions of your relatives and 
forget your obligations to society.” 

“ Ted, do stop using such big words. But 
that’s just it! You always understand exactly 
what I mean. I do believe you’re a ‘ seventh ’ 
something yourself.” 

“ ‘ Seventh ’ in the line of dunces at the foot 
of my class is the only mystic numerical honour 
belonging to me. But the more I think of your 
situation the more I see in it. Do you know, 
Polly, this goes ahead of any scheme we ever 
had. I see the most glorious possibilities in 
it. Pshaw! I wish this were the beginning 
of the holidays instead of the end. We could 
accomplish wonders! But let me think a bit, 
we may be able to do something yet.” 


5<5 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


“ And do you really think I have magical 
powers, Ted, or are you just joking? ” Polly 
asked, anxiously. 

“ Yes, Polly, Pm sure you have the germs of 
power in you. We must get them to sprout, 
that’s all. 4 Seventh daughters ’ used to get 
their power suddenly in old times with the 
touch of a wand or waving of a bejewelled 
fan, but it comes more gradually nowadays, 
like cutting teeth, you know, and you have to 
do some work yourself. I declare, Polly, I 
believe I can make a feminine 4 Sherlock 
Holmes ’ of you, if you will put yourself 
under my tuition and keep everything a dead 
secret from the rest. Of course you must tell 
Aunt Emmie all about last night, but she will 
forgive you, and I tell you, if you carry out 
my instructions, we’ll do some 4 stunts ’ the 
next time I come home that will make the 
girls’ hair stand on end.” 

44 That sounds splendid, Ted. But how can 
I do anything alone?” she observed, dubi- 
ously. 

44 Oh, letters, Polly! I’ll write you letters of 
instruction, and if you follow them out, you’ll 
learn fast.” 


IN CONFERENCE 


57 


“ Do you have courses in magic at college, 
Ted? It must be more fun than arithmetic.” 

“ There isn’t much magic during the term, 
Polly,” laughed Ted. “ That comes in when 
we ‘ cram ’ for * exams.’ I’ve seen fellows 
do acts of magic then that would make your 
teeth chatter.” 

At this point Anne and Frances began to 
hammer impatiently at the door, and even gen- 
tle Nell’s voice was heard outside : 

“ Come, Polly, you mustn’t monopolise dear 
Ted this last morning.” 

“ Dear me,” ejaculated Ted, as he opened 
the door, “ I seem to be in great demand this 
morning. This being so popular with the 
ladies is enough to turn a fellow’s head. I 
shall have to begin to scatter favours, I see. 
Polly, run up-stairs, like a good child, and 
bring down sundry packages you will find, 
tied up with gold thread.” 

“ Oh ! candy ! good, good ! ” and the three 
girls joined hands and danced about him, 
catching hold of Mrs. Andrews as she passed 
through the room and making her one of the 
circle. 

“ Hail ! the conquering hero — goes ! ” Ted 


58 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


began to sing, when Polly appeared with an 
armful of boxes. 

“ You see,” said Ted, as he distributed them, 
“ I knew I should have to kiss you all good- 
bye, so I thought I’d make you as sweet as 
possible. I won’t mind if your mouths are a 
little sticky.” 

“ Oh ! you mean thing ! ” said Anne. “ As 
if Fan and I could be any sweeter, when we 
shall be sixteen our next birthday.” 

“ You’re not sixteen, yet, Anne, my child, 
and you must remember that ‘ the darkest hour 
is just before the dawn.’ No, I make no ex- 
ceptions, except of Aunt Emmie. Hers is a 
case of ‘ sweets to the sweet,’ ” and he handed 
out to her the largest box of all. 

“ Now, there’s only time to throw my things 
together and rush to the train,” he cried, as 
he dashed up the stairs, calling back, 

“ I want all you girls to go to the station 
with me and form an admiring group around 
me on the platform, so that all the college fel- 
lows on the train will be furiously envious 
when each in turn you lift your ‘ ruby lips,’ 
flavoured with peppermint and garnished with 
chocolate.” 


CHAPTER V. 


PLANTING SEEDS OF MAGIC 

The days following Ted’s departure for 
college were as gloomy and depressing as any 
the Andrews family had ever known. The 
removal of so cheery and helpful a presence 
as that of Ted’s from the family circle left a 
blank emptiness, which was increased by 
Aggie’s continued absence at the house-party. 
Doctor Andrews’s patient did not improve as 
he had hoped, and at the end of the second 
day the long, dreary, equinoctial rains set in, 
unpleasantly reminding the world that sum- 
mer was over and the time had come to pre- 
pare for winter’s shut-in period. 

On the morning of the fourth day, a Satur- 
day, after a night of stormy wind and beating 
rain, the girls drew their chairs close before 
the open fire in the dining-room after break- 
fast, and shiveringly condoled with each other 
over the end of summer. 

59 


6o 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


“ My dear girls, don’t be so despondent. 
We shall have some beautiful fall weather 
after this rain is over, and you will have just 
as glorious nutting expeditions as you have 
had every autumn,” broke in Mrs. Andrews, 
brightly, trying to dispel the prevailing gloom. 

“ Oh, mother, I don’t believe the sun will 
ever shine again,” exclaimed Anne. “ I feel 
sure the cold weather will settle down right 
away. Of course we shouldn’t mind if lots of 
snow and snappy frosts would come so we 
could have sleighing, but weeks and weeks of 
dark days and slushy streets and lessons at 
school ! Oh, girls, what shall we do ? ” 

“ There are no slushy streets and lessons 
to-day, and I, for one, am not going to give up 
to the weather,” said Nell, rising deter- 
minedly. “ And since you ask, Anne, what 
we are going to do, I make reply that I am go- 
ing to put on my rain-coat and rubbers and 
walk down to the post-office to mail these 
letters to Ted. Poor fellow! he must be as 
homesick as anything by this time,” and out 
she went, leaving the other three moping over 
the fire. 

Nor had they rallied from their despondency 


PLANTING SEEDS OF MAGIC 


6 1 


when in half an hour she came rushing in 
with an animation quite foreign to her usual 
quiet ways. 

“ Just see, girls, what that dear Ted has 
done! Written letters to all of us! Aren’t 
we ashamed to think we have been so selfish 
and only started our letters off to him this 
morning? ' Here Anne, Frances, mother,” as 
she tossed the letters to their owners, and 
hastily tore open her own. 

“ Isn’t there one for me? ” spoke up Polly s 
anxiously. 

“ He has probably put a note for you in 
mother’s letter,” said Frances, in a superior 
tone. “ Such little girls mustn’t expect letters 
all to themselves.” 

“ No, there’s nothing in mine,” said mother, 
“ but we’ll read all the letters aloud, dear, and 
that will be as good as one for yourself.” 

“ I didn’t suppose he’d forget me,” gulped 
Polly, as she turned away to the window to 
hide a tear that was making its urgent way 
down over her round cheek. 

Just at that moment a sharp peal at the 
door-bell sent Anne scurrying to the door. 

“ Polly,” she called, “ come here, quick, and 


62 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


sign for this. It’s a special-delivery letter for 
you as big as an express package. 

“ What on earth can Ted be writing so 
much to you about? It must be a biography 
of his early life,” she went on, as they returned 
to the dining-room together. 

“ No, you can’t see it,” cried Polly, as they 
all crowded about her. “ It’s my own letter, 
and besides it has written in big letters on the 
outside, ‘ Private ’ and ‘ Personal,’ and that 
means no one else can read it. Make the girls 
go away, mother,” and she held the letter be- 
hind her. 

“ Come, Frances and Anne, don’t tease her. 
Of course it’s her own letter and she needn’t 
show it unless she chooses. Ted himself 
doesn’t want the rest of us to read it. Listen 
to what he says in my letter,” and she read 
aloud : “ Auntie dear, don’t worry about 

Polly’s and my little secret. It is perfectly 
harmless and will do us both good. I need 
some amusement, for already corroding care 
gnaws like a worm at my vitals. ‘ Prof.’ Un- 
derwood is urging us all to try for the English 
prize. He took me aside in private to-day and 
remarked in his most solemn manner, ‘ Mr. 


PLANTING SEEDS OF MAGIC 63 

Bertrand, I consider you quite capable of tak- 
ing this prize. You have sufficient talent, but 
it will be necessary for you to apply yourself 
with diligence and seriousness/ Just fancy, 
auntie, your scatter-brained nephew applying 
himself to work for a prize. ‘ Diligence ’ and 
‘ seriousness ’ are words of unknown import to 
my mind.” 

“ He didn’t forget me, after all,” said Polly, 
as she glanced down the first page of her bud- 
get. “I’ll read you just a speck from my 
letter. ‘ Dear Polly, you mustn’t think that I 
have forgotten you because I wrote to your 
mother and the girls first. Those letters were 
mere society affairs, the conventional notes 
proper to such occasions. As I now take my 
pen in hand it is that I may speak from the 
heart. Only you and I and the river 
know ’ — ” but here Polly stopped reading 
abruptly, while her face coloured up to her 
curls. 

“ My, how mysterious ! ” said Anne. “ You 
and Ted and the river! He must be writing 
a treatise on fishing, ‘ The Complete Angler ’ 
or something of that kind.” 

But Polly waited to hear no more. Clasp- 


6 4 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


in g her precious letter close, she sped up the 
stairs to her own room and turned the key 
in the lock. 

And what a letter it was! Polly laughed 
and was thoughtful by turns. There was a 
careful programme made out for a month, 
each hour of the day marked with its special 
duty. Much of it was nonsense, pure and 
simple, such as the spaces left for the nights 
decorated with fanciful and grotesque figures 
personating dreams. But through it all ran a 
little thread of sensible direction, the drift of 
which Polly was quick to see. Somewhere 
in the absurd list of each day's duties was 
always one, starred or underscored, or in some 
way distinguished, and these were the special 
things which she knew he meant her to per- 
form faithfully, with a view to the growth 
and development of the much-longed-for mag- 
ical power. It is true she could not fathom 
the reason for them, nor could she at all under- 
stand how their performance was to bring 
about the desired result. 

She did not know, for instance, just why 
she should stand on the hearth-rug in the din- 
ing-room at half-past seven o'clock, Monday 


PLANTING SEEDS OF MAGIC . 65 

morning, October the fourth, and, after shut- 
ting her eyes tightly for one minute, take four 
strides to the kitchen door, stand there one 
minute, and then return to her room, and write 
down in a blank book, to be procured for the 
purpose, together with the date, a complete 
list of the persons and objects she had seen 
in that one moment. It was still more im- 
possible to understand why, on the afternoon 
of the next day, on her return from school, 
she was to stand in front of the mirror and 
admire herself in the glass for two minutes, 
then suddenly open the top bureau drawer, 
look fixedly into its depths for another minute, 
then gaze once more at herself in the glass, 
and write in the book the first thought which 
came into her head. 

Though she carried out these directions to 
the letter on the day appointed, she felt rather 
ashamed to write in the book this thought 
which popped into her head when she contem- 
plated herself in the mirror after a survey of 
her bureau drawer: 

“ Why, Marietta Andrews, I’m ashamed to 
look you in the face! What a dreadful mess 
that drawer is in ! ” But she conscientiously 


66 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


wrote it down, for the book was to be sent to 
Ted at the end of the month, with her signed 
affidavit on the last page that every word in 
it was true. 

Polly thought she understood better the di- 
rection for October the thirteenth, which read, 

“ Go to the drug-store at the corner of Main 
and Primrose Streets, buy a bunch of Japanese 
incense sticks, and, while it is being wrapped 
up, look through the inner room into the back 
prescription-room. Return home, light one of 
the sticks, wave it thirteen times around your 
head, write a list of everything you saw 
through that door, make a sketch of the wall- 
paper design, then hold the incense before your 
nose and close your eyes until it has burned 
out.” 

“ This seems more sensible,” said Polly to 
herself, as she held the incense before her nose 
and leaned back in her chair, “ like real magic. 
The thirteenth of the month — incense and 
smoke — I waved the stick thirteen times, as 
Ted said. How delicious this incense smells! 
I really believe I feel the power sort of grow- 
ing in me. But I don’t see any use in draw- 
ing the wall-paper design.” 


PLANTING SEEDS OF MAGIC 


67 


Polly was rather disappointed when, on the 
first of November, instead of a second long, 
full letter of instruction, she received a short 
note, which said, 



“ Repeat exactly instructions of October. 
Do not fail — most important. Good-bye. 
Love to auntie and the girls. Tremendously 
busy. Yours, 


“ Ted/’ 


68 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


Though the instructions were the same, the 
results were quite different. Polly was sur- 
prised to find that, where two or three lines 
of the blank-book had sufficed in some cases, 
during October, to contain a list of the things 
she had seen at a single glance through door- 
ways or into shop-windows, she now required 
a page and often more. It was a great satis- 
faction, too, when she wrote, as the first 
thought upon beholding her top drawer, 

“ Well, Polly, you certainly have improved. 
That drawer looks every bit as good as Neffs.” 

She would have been still more surprised 
and perhaps a little aggrieved if she could 
have seen Ted, as he compared the two records. 
When he read over the bureau-drawer items, 
he threw back his head and laughed loud and 
long. 

“ Oh, Polly, Polly, how proud I am of my- 
self ! I certainly diagnosed your case to a dot, 
and my prescription is working like — yes — 
like magic” 

The December letter was much more satis- 
factory to Polly. The instructions were new 
and of a somewhat different character. There 
were still lists of objects to be made out, but 


PLANTING SEEDS OF MAGIC 69 

now their relative positions were to be noted, 
their distance one from the other, or their 
location with regard to the points of the com- 
pass. Sometimes diagrams were ordered in- 
stead of lists, with directions like the follow- 
ing: 

“ Arrange thirteen objects on your dress- 
ing-table in the manner in which combs and 
hairpins and other ‘ bias ’ silver-backed things 
should be placed on every proper young 
woman’s table, note their exact position, go 
down-stairs, forget them, and three times thir- 
teen minutes afterward make a diagram show- 
ing them as you remember them. Return to 
your room and make a second diagram as they 
really are, and enter both records in your 
blank book.” 

The week before Christmas was left an en- 
tire blank with the mere note scrawled across 
the space: 

“ These days reserved for making a Christ- 
mas present for your cousin Ted.” 

But the following week, the one between 
Christmas and New Year’s Day, was so filled 
with weird instructions as to the arrangement 
of every bureau drawer in her room, the books 


70 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


in her own little bookcase, and her writing 
portfolio and little mending basket that it quite 
made up for the previous week of vacation 
granted her. 

The week preceding Christmas was a busy 
one in other ways for the whole household, 
special pains and interest being taken in the 
preparation of the packet designed for Ted. 
Polly stood thoughtfully regarding the other 
girls on the first morning of that week, as, a 
lively, industrious group, they sat around the 
big circular centre-table in the sitting-room, 
from which papers and magazines had been 
temporarily removed to make way for a va- 
riety of Christmas work. 

“ Girls,” she finally declared, “ I have just 
decided what to give Ted for a present, and 
when I look at you working here, I believe 
that mother and I understand boys better than 
any of you. It’s rather funny that mother 
should when she never had a boy of her own, 
but I suppose mothers are made so they will 
understand boys or girls, whichever kind 
comes. Now you seem to think that Ted 
wants embroidered book-covers and pen-wi- 
pers, and painted necktie-cases and glove-boxes, 


PLANTING SEEDS OF MAGIC 




just because you like such things yourselves. 
I don’t believe he will ever use one of them, 
any more than he did that old collar-box you 
made me decorate for him last year. I saw 
him unpack his trunk, and his collars were 
squeezed up in a tight roll and stuffed down 
in a corner, and when I asked, ‘ Ted, don't 
you use the collar-box I sent you ? ’ he sort of 
stammered and pretended, and said, ‘ Oh, I 
guess the collars must have dropped out, the 
trunk was so shaken up in the journey.’ But 
I know he never used it. Now mother is out 
in the kitchen, making him a splendid big fruit 
cake, and as soon as the grocery boy comes 
with the dates and nuts and things I ordered, 
I’m going to make him a five-pound box of 
home-made candy. On Christrnas morning 
he’ll look at all those things you’re making, 
and show them to the other fellows, and then 
throw them in his trunk, while he writes the 
sweetest letters, telling you each that the thing 
you sent was what he wanted most of all and 
had longed for all his life. But my box of 
candy and mother’s cake he’ll pass around, 
and every one will say, ‘ Ted, old man, that’s 


72 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


a jolly brick of an aunt you have, and that 
little cousin of yours can’t be beat.’ ” 

This lengthy speech was received with much 
merriment, and Aggie said, 

“ You seem to have a remarkable insight 
into the masculine character for one so young. 
But don’t you know, child, that in this ad- 
vanced age modern culture and aesthetic devel- 
opment have exploded that old barbarous idea 
that 4 the quickest way to reach a man’s heart 
is through his stomach ’ ? ” 

Polly shook her head doubtfully over the 
long words, and replied, 

“ I don’t understand all that, Aggie, but 
if it means that Ted won’t like my box of 
candy better than all those art things, I don’t 
believe it,” and she vanished in the direction 
of the kitchen, rolling her sleeves above her 
dimpled elbows as she went. 

But whether the girls rightly understood 
Ted or not, the box which came from him 
Christmas morning showed that he knew ex- 
actly for what each girlish heart had most 
longed; — the book which Aggie wanted, the 
silver-handled embroidery scissors Nell had 
wished for so long, two pairs of gloves apiece 


PLANTING SEEDS OF MAGIC 73 

for the twins, — and for Polly the queerest- 
looking round package done up in the coarsest 
of brown wrapping-paper. When this was re- 
moved, a lighter shade of the same appeared, 
and after that a green paper, then a blue, a 
delicate rosy pink, a lavender, and finally a 
little box wrapped in gold paper was revealed. 
This, the seventh, proved to be the last, for 
when it was taken off a round leather case 
dropped out, within which, on a satin bed, 
lay a locket of curious design. Seven circles 
of gold intertwined and bound together with 
seven smaller ones made the setting for a lovely 
Mexican opal of a warm yellow colour and 
yet holding hints within its depths of all the 
seven colours of the rainbow. 

Doctor and Mrs. Andrews and Polly’s four 
sisters praised and wondered and speculated 
as to the unusual setting, but she alone knew 
its meaning, and, gazing at the warm fires of 
the opal, she seemed to feel a quickening of 
the magic powers which she felt surer than 
ever lay hid in her nature. 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE FIRST - FRUITS OF HARVEST 

Early in the morning of New Year’s Day, 
the monthly letter of instruction arrived. 
Polly had been awaiting it eagerly, and hur- 
ried with it to her room to study its contents. 

“ My esteemed cousin,” it began, “ this first 
day of a new year is a solemn occasion, which 
most of us are obliged to spend in reviewing 
our past sins and in turning over very much 
blotted and untidy-looking pages. To tell the 
truth, I have a little job of that kind on hand 
myself ; but you, Polly, are free from all that, 
if, as I trust, you have faithfully carried out 
the directions which I set for the closing week 
of the old year, now past and gone. Your 
bureau drawers and all your maidenly posses- 
sions are in immaculate order. As you look 
from one to the other of them, a pleasant glow 
of satisfaction must steal over you, and you 
74 


THE FIRST-FRUITS OF HARVEST 75 

realise that the magic power which has lain 
so long dormant within you is at last awaking. 
Confess, Miss Polly, that no former New 
Year’s Day has found those possessions of 
yours in like condition. If, last year, some 
fairy dame had appeared to you and foretold 
such a state of affairs, your whole family 
would have exclaimed with one voice, ‘ Only 
magic could do that ! ’ And now, behold, 
magic has done it.” 

Beginning with this January letter, the daily 
“ lessons in magic ” began to deal more with 
persons than with objects. There were still 
many “ review lessons,” as Polly called them, 
and the faithful little record book showed an 
increasing swiftness and completeness in 
observation. The new lessons, however, were 
more difficult, and it was not so easy to write 
out the results, but Ted was exacting in his 
demands, and every month the book made its 
journey from Polly at home to Ted at college. 

It must be confessed that Polly had frequent 
misgivings as to the use of doing all the curi- 
ous things Ted set for her, but she was stim- 
ulated by his promises and praise. “ Just 
wait till summer and then you’ll see,” “ You 


76 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


are doing bravely, Polly,” and “ Your power 
has swelled about double this month.” 

“ Doctor Papa ” was one of the principal 
persons designated for Polly to exercise her 
“ power ” upon, and almost once a week the 
directions read something like this: 

“ Look carefully at your father during the 
first five minutes at the supper-table, listen well 
to what he says, and make silent guesses as 
to where he has been during the day. Write 
these in your book, and mark with a star all 
which turn out to be correct.” 

Polly had been able to keep the secret well 
from her sisters, probably owing to gentle, 
private admonitions which they each received 
from their mother on the subject. There was 
always more or less joking and some attempt 
at sisterly teasing each month on the arrival 
of the huge letter, sent always by special de- 
livery. But Polly managed to smuggle the 
bulky package which contained her record 
book into the post unseen by the rest, and 
not one of the family suspected the rigid in- 
spection which Polly made, daily, of them, 
their possessions, and their doings. They did 
not dream that the air about them was heavily 




JOYFUL NEWS CAME FROM TED, ONE MORNING. 




THE FIRST-FRUITS OF HARVEST 79 

charged with magic, though now and then 
one or the other was startled by a mysterious 
flash beyond their comprehension. 

Joyful news came from Ted, one morning 
in May, when the family were all seated at the 
breakfast-table, in a telegram which an- 
nounced, 

“ To Teddy, the Dunce, awarded, one Eng- 
lish prize. Send laurel wreath.” 

“ The dear boy,” exclaimed Mrs. Andrews, 
as she flourished the bit of yellow paper, 
thereby nearly upsetting the coffee-pot. 
“ Bless him ! Bless him ! ” ejaculated the doc- 
tor, running his fingers through his heavy gray 
locks until they stood on end. The twins 
jumped up and waltzed about the breakfast 
table. Aggie and Nell reached for the tele- 
gram and re-read it aloud in turn, and Polly’s 
face shone and her eyes sparkled, as she re- 
peated over and over, “ I knew he would take 
it, I knew he would take it.” 

A “ laurel wreath,” in the form of a return 
message of congratulations, soon went speed- 
ing its way to him, but that evening after sup- 
per, Aggie remarked, 

“ I don’t feel as if we had done enough to 


80 A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 

honour Ted on this great occasion. Let’s 
write a family letter, one from each of us, 
and send them in one big envelope.” 

The idea was unanimously accepted by the 
others, Frances adding, 

“ And perhaps it will make his conscience 
prick for having sent such snippy short letters 
this winter to all of us except Polly.” 

“ Let’s make the letters very long and tell 
him all the news, too,” said Anne, whose own 
conscience pricked a little, for having written 
no letter to Ted since acknowledging his Christ- 
mas gift. 

It may have been the before-mentioned 
magic in the air, or some secret telepathic 
communication from mind to mind that caused 
each writer, as they sat together about the 
round table in the sitting-room, after express- 
ing her satisfaction over the winning of the 
prize, to take one person, and that Polly, as 
the theme for a large portion of her letter. 

“ You will be surprised and pleased, dear 
Ted,” wrote Mrs. Andrews, “ on your return 
to us in the summer, to see how Polly has 
grown and developed. In spite of her short 
and dumpy childhood, she is going to be the 


THE FIRST-FRUITS OF HARVEST 


8l 


tallest of the family, I think, and she is getting 
to be a great comfort. The other girls have 
no fault to find with her disorderly ways now- 
adays, for I think no one of them is more 
careful than she is about her belongings. And 
she is so thoughtful, too, for one so young. 
Only last night after supper, she whispered 
to me as we sat on the porch, ‘ Mommie, dear, 
you have been worrying all day about your 
summer sewing, haven’t you? I am such a 
big girl now that I want you to teach me how 
to make my own shirt-waists. I want to do 
them all alone myself, so as to give your dear 
eyes a rest.’ You see, Ted, my eyes have been 
troubling me for some weeks, though how she 
knew it I can’t tell, for I have been careful not 
to mention it to any one but your uncle, think- 
ing it would trouble the girls. And it is true 
that I had worried all day about the sewing, 
though I thought I had kept it quite to my- 
self.” 

The tenor of Nell’s letter was much the 
same as that of her mother’s. She commented 
on the astonishing way in which Polly’s sense 
of order had developed, particularly with re- 
gard to her bureau drawers. Sister Nell’s 


82 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


specialty was bureau drawers, her own being 
models of immaculateness and daintiness. 

“ You certainly will be an old maid, Nell,” 
Anne had once said. “ Don’t you know how 
all the old maids in New England stories go 
about with the odour of lavender clinging to 
them? Why, do you know, I should just be 
afraid to use lavender the way you do ! ” And 
Nell had laughed and replied, “ Perhaps I am 
more afraid of the alternative.” 

“ Her memory, too, is growing to be re- 
markable,” Nell’s letter ran on. “We were 
all trying to remember, one night at supper, 
what day Frances began her music lessons 
with Miss White, and Polly spoke up sud- 
denly, 4 It was the twenty-fourth of April. 
That was the day, papa, that you were called 
in to see Miss Pinxter for the first time. 
Mamma baked cookies that day, and you, Nell, 
wore your new spring jacket down-town when 
you went to meet Frances.’ How do you 
suppose she remembered all those little 
things ? ” 

“ You will have to acknowledge, Ted, when 
you come home,” wrote Aggie, “ that I was 
right that day last summer when I encouraged 


THE FIRST-FRUITS OF HARVEST 83 


mother to be quite severe with Polly for losing 
my chain. It taught her a lesson, and I take 
some pride to myself when I see how careful 
she is now. I think she has never lost anything 
since that day. On the contrary, she often 
finds things for the rest of us. There is some- 
thing almost uncanny about the way she does 
it, too, as if she saw things at a distance with 
her mind’s eye. One day last week I could 
not find my gold thimble. I had looked in all 
the places where it ought to be, and most 
of the places where it ought not to be. It 
did seem as if it had taken wings and flown 
away. Polly was out in the garden. I called 
to her, thinking she might have been using 
it. ‘ No, Aggie,’ she answered, ‘ I have not 
touched your thimble, but you will probably 
find it on your dressing-table, just back of 
your bottle of violet water.’ And there I 
found it, though I believe I had looked on that 
dressing-table twenty times. I asked her 
afterward how she knew it was there, and she 
made the most big, mysterious eyes at me, 
and said, slowly, ‘ I don’t think you could 
understand, Aggie. Your dressing-table came 


8 4 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


before my eyes, like a picture, and there was 
the thimble/ ” 

Anne wrote a lengthy epistle to make up 
for her deficiencies in that line during the 
winter, raking her memory for scraps of in- 
formation which would interest her cousin. 

“ What do you suppose Polly did last Val- 
entine’s Day? You must know, Sir Ted, that 
in spite of what you said about Frances’ and 
my lack of sweetness, we each received four- 
teen valentines. You can’t think how excit- 
ing it was! Every time any member of the 
family came from the post-office, there were 
two or three fresh ones, and of course we 
couldn’t possibly guess who sent any of them, 
though we tried and tried. Polly came home 
from school, and sat down to look at them, 
and, would you believe it? she told us who 
sent every one of them. Wasn’t it provoking? 
For we didn’t really want to know. It’s so 
much more fun to guess and guess about it, 
and they weren’t half so pretty after we knew 
from whom they came, just boys we see every 
day at school! We begged Polly to tell us 
how she knew, but she laughed and said, ‘ Oh, 
some in one way and some in another. You 


THE FIRST-FRUITS OF HARVEST 85 

ought to have known yourself that Joe Selwin 
sent that one with the pink doves to you and 
the blue doves to Fan. He’s tried, you see, 
to change his handwriting, but don’t you 
know, when he writes his Latin verbs on the 
blackboard, he always makes his s’s dip down 
like that.’ By the way, Ted, in our fourteen 
valentines apiece, I don’t count those comic 
ones you sent us. We didn’t have to guess 
where they came. from. The exquisite style 
of both poetry and pictures marked them for 
your very own.” 

Frances grew confidential in her letter. 

“ Ted, I am dreadfully worried about Polly. 
I haven’t talked about it to the rest, but she 
does so many strange things that I’m afraid 
her mind is affected, or that she is turning into 
a mind-reader or something dreadful like that. 
I have seen her stop in front of the door before 
she goes into a room and roll her eyes about 
and then shut them for a minute. I do hope 
you’ll take notice of her when you come, and 
have a talk with father, if you think best. 
Perhaps he can give her some kind of quieting 
medicine to ward it off, you know. Last Fri- 
day, after school, Belle Watson asked Anne 


86 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


and me to come and bring our fancy work 
and spend Saturday afternoon. She said ex- 
pressly that she' wanted just Anne and me, and 
all the morning we were wondering how we 
could slip away without telling Polly, for she 
would want to go, too. When we sat down to 
the dinner-table, Polly turned around to me 
so suddenly I almost jumped out of my chair, 
and said, 4 Don’t worry so, Fan. Just give 
Belle my regrets and tell her I couldn’t possibly 
get away to come this afternoon, Pm so 
busy.’ ” 

Doctor Andrews, coming in from his even- 
ing round of calls just as the letters were 
being finished, was begged to add his mite to 
the contribution. 

“ My dear boy,” he wrote, “ we are all 
proud of you, and our pride is mingled with 
a certain self-satisfaction, for we have felt 
sure all the time that you would do something 
of this kind. There is another matter in which 
I am taking a great deal of satisfaction lately. 
You no doubt often remember hearing dis- 
paraging remarks made by members of the 
family in regard to my small harum-scarum 
* tomboy,’ Polly. I wouldn’t let them keep 


THE. FIRST -FRUITS OF HARVEST 87 


her indoors and teach her all sorts of orderly 
nonsense. I wanted my only ‘ boy ’ to run 
loose a little while. And now that she is grow- 
ing up, and I am losing my boy, I and the rest 
are ' finding that she is as womanly as any 
of them. You always stood up for Polly, so 
I am sure you will be glad to hear this.” 

When Ted read this goodly batch of dear 
home letters in his far-away college quarters, 
he rubbed his hands gleefully together, and 
muttered to himself, 

“ Teddy, my boy, you have done yourself 
proud. This is better than many English 
prizes, and adds at least sixteen spikes to the 
glittering halo of glory which surrounds your 
noble brow.” 


CHAPTER VII. 


SUNSHINE AFTER RAIN 

The second Saturday in June, like the first 
one, and also like a number of days between, 
was rainy. 

“ And ‘ rainy ’ isn’t the word to use on a 
day like this,” said Aggie, who stood by 
one of the sitting-room windows, impatiently 
drumming with her fingers on the glass. 
“ The ground is so soaked with water it can’t 
hold another drop, and every leaf and blade 
of grass looks perfectly discouraged. I know 
I am discouraged. This is the second time 
that picnic has been postponed, and I don’t 
believe we shall ever be able to have it.” 

“ It is terribly disappointing,” replied Nell. 

Now Aggie’s tone of voice had had in it 
a downward droop, which left a train of de- 
spair behind it, whereas Nell’s words, though 
in actual meaning they expressed the same 
88 


SUNSHINE AFTER RAIN 


89 


thought as those of her sister, were uttered 
in a tone which caused her hearers to raise their 
heads and turn toward her, as if they had re- 
ceived a message of hope. 

“Well?” said Frances, with a questioning 
note. 

“ I have a plan for to-day, girls, which, of 
course, is not as delightful as the first picnic 
of the season in lovely June would be, but 
which I hope you will be willing to accept as 
a substitute. You know, that last winter, when 
Miss Holly from the city gave that talk about 
the college settlement work, we promised to 
send twenty dressed dolls for the Christmas- 
tree. Now if we put off doing the work till a 
few weeks before Christmas, either we shall not 
do it at all, or the dolls will be so horridly 
dressed that we’ll be ashamed of them. If 
we begin now, and devote every wet day dur- 
ing the summer to it, we shall be able to send 
a set of dolls to be proud of. I am going up 
in the garret and get mother’s piece-bag; you 
know there are loads of lovely scraps in it, 
and we can plan out the work, even if we don’t 
get much done to-day.” 

“ Well,” said Anne, whose sixteenth birth- 


90 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


day had been consummated so recently that 
the idea of dolls was more remote than it ever 
would be again, “ I can think of more spark- 
lingly entertaining things to do than dressing 
dolls, but even that will be a relief to-day, so 
bring on your pieces, Nell, and I’ll design some 
costumes which will satisfy even a slum child. 
I have heard they are hard to suit.” 

Nell returned shortly from the attic with 
the piece-bag, a capacious brown linen recep- 
tacle, which was almost like a member of the 
family. Made by Mrs. Andrews in her early 
married life, it contained the rolls, remnants, 
and scraps which had accumulated during 
years, in the variety and quantity that such 
things are amassed in a family of girls. It 
had been ransacked many a time for a bit of 
velvet or silk to trim or help out a frock, and 
still more times at annual Christmas doll- 
dressings, but like the widow’s cruse of oil, 
the supply never gave out. On the contrary, 
it seemed ever to increase, and this day’s search 
yielded a bewildering supply which was soon 
spread over every available table, chair, and 
sofa in the room, to say nothing of heaps on 
the floor. The bag of doll patterns was next 


SUNSHINE AFTER RAIN 


91 


produced, and Aggie was despatched to the 
toy-store, after an assessment had been made 
on each one’s pin money, to secure five curly- 
locked, bisque-headed babies, upon whom to 
begin operations. 

Anne appointed herself chief designer and 
costumer, Nell generously took up the difficult 
and thankless task of cutter, and the rest 
busied themselves with one thing or another. 
It was a bright and merry group upon which 
the pattering rain-drops looked in, through 
the vine-framed windows, and, after beating 
a long and defiant tune upon the roofs and 
leaves outside, they seemed to become dis- 
couraged, and subsided, allowing a straggling 
sunbeam or two to find a way through the 
dripping branches of the trees. 

Contented minds combined with busy fingers 
usually result in a wagging of youthful 
tongues, and it was into the midst of much 
merry chatter and gay laughter that Mrs. An- 
drews slipped very quietly and unobtrusively 
about eleven o’clock of the morning. She sat 
for a few minutes looking about at her garden 
of girls with a pleased look on her face, a 
mingling of motherly pride with something 


92 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


else which brought the suspicion of a smile 
to the corners of her mouth and a light to her 
pleasant gray eyes. Polly happened to look 
up and caught the hovering smile. 

“What is it, mother? Tell us what has 
happened ? ” she cried, dropping the wee silk 
petticoat which she was adorning with tiny 
ruffles. 

“ Why, Polly, child, what makes you think 
anything has happened ? ” her mother asked, 
sobering down and carelessly slipping one 
hand under the corner of her big blue gingham 
apron. 

“ Didn’t you know, mother, that Polly is 
a prophetess? She always knows when any- 
thing is going to happen or has happened. 
You may as well speak up, for you can’t keep 
a secret while she is around. She reads it 
right through your skull, don’t you, Polly? 
Tell us now, what am I thinking about? ” ques- 
tioned Anne, teasingly. 

“ I can’t read through skulls that are too 
thick,” replied Polly, with mischief in her voice, 
while the rest laughed at Anne’s discomfiture. 

“ But, mother, something has happened,” 


SUNSHINE AFTER RAIN 


93 


Polly went on. “ What are you hiding under 
your apron there ? ” 

At this a host of small silk and velvet gar- 
ments fluttered to the floor like autumn leaves, 
as the girls jumped up and crowded about 
their mother. 

“ Well, there’s no use trying to keep a secret 
here, I see,” their mother said, laughingly. 
“ Indeed, I hadn’t intended to try. I came in, 
instead, to tell a secret, — a secret which has 
been mine overnight, but which belongs to 
all of you. You are always wishing that some- 
thing splendid would happen, and I think you 
will agree that at last it has happened. This 
letter came last night from Aunt Annie. 
Listen while I read it,” and she drew forth the 
letter from under her apron. 

“ Dear Sister : — You can imagine how 
delighted Ted’s father and I were to hear the 
news of his English prize. It hardly seems 
possible that our heedless little boy has devel- 
oped into such a scholar. Of course our hearts 
are hungering to see him, but it seems best for 
a number of reasons that he should finish his 
four years at college before making the long 


94 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


journey West to us. We cannot tell you how 
grateful we are to you and the doctor, and to 
the girls for making such a home for him in 
his holidays. He is always happy with you, 
and the girls are as dear to him as sisters 
could be. We have wanted very much to show 
you all in some way how we appreciate your 
love and goodness, but there seems to be no 
way. It is so long since we have seen the 
girls that we do not feel as if we knew their 
tastes and ambitions, and so the only thing 
left for us to do seems crude, perhaps, but we 
trust you will take it as it is meant. A gift 
of money weighs little in the balance beside 
the love you have lavished upon our boy, but 
please, dear ones all, take this check which we 
enclose, and let it tell a little of the gratitude 
we feel. One-half, dear sister, is for you and 
the doctor, and the rest is to be divided equally 
among the five girls, to do with as you and 
they please, to spend or to keep, whatever will 
give the most pleasure.” 

“ And the check which she encloses, my 
dears,” said Mrs. Andrews, as she wiped from 
her eyes the tears which she had not been 


SUNSHINE AFTER RAIN 95 

able to keep out of her voice, “ is for five 
hundred dollars.” 

“ Why, mommie,” exclaimed Polly, in an 
awe-stricken voice, “ what a lot of money — 
and for us? We haven’t done anything for 
Ted. He’s always doing things for us when 
he’s here.” 

“ So he is, dear fellow,” replied Mrs. 
Andrews. “ It certainly seems as if this 
were undeserved, at least on my part.” 

“ No, mother,” said Frances, giving her 
mother a hug and kiss, “ you deserve every- 
thing good in this world. Two hundred and 
fifty dollars ! I just expect you and father will 
build that bath-room and new front porch you 
have talked about so much ! ” 

“ Girls, do you realise ? ” said Aggie, stand- 
ing up in the midst of them. “ It’s fifty dol- 
lars apiece! Fifty dollars! why, I feel like 
an heiress ! ” 

“ I’m very much afraid,” said Nell, “ that 
Ted himself has had a hand in this, and that 
one of the reasons to which auntie refers for 
his not going West this summer is this very 
gift to us. It’s too sweet and generous of them. 
Do you think we ought to accept it, mother? ” 


96 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


“ Father and I have talked that over, and we 
have decided that the true way to accept a gift 
is in the spirit it was given, and that it would 
be a real and cruel hurt to Aunt Annie and 
Uncle Fred to refuse it. So father had the 
check cashed this morning, and here are your 
shares.” 

From under the blue apron came another 
envelope, out of which she drew five crisp new 
fifty-dollar bills, and distributed them to the 
breathless members of the little group. 

Dolls and doll-clothes were quite forgotten 
in the face of such a prodigious event, and they 
all fell to wondering and exclaiming and finally 
to discussing eagerly the uses to which they 
would apply their wealth. 

“ Here is one of the advantages of being 
twins, Fan,” exclaimed Anne. “ The other 
girls are all singles and can talk only of their 
fifty-dollar shares. But you and I are doubles, 
and it’s ever so much grander to say, 4 We have 
a hundred dollars ! ’ ” 

“ Oh, the sound of it is grand ! ” answered 
Frances, “ but the ‘ feel ’ of it is grander. 
Just listen ! ” and she waved her bill in the 
air, “ isn’t that a delicious, crackly, crispy 


SUNSHINE AFTER RAIN 


97 


sound? And just imagine how nice to give 
your pocket a little pat now and then and 
think, ‘ Fifty dollars in there! ’ ” 

“ I’m afraid,” said Aggie, “ we won’t be able 
to pat them very long. Mine fairly burns in 
my fingers now. What shall • you buy with 
yours, Nell?” 

A very happy, quiet look shone in Nell’s eyes 
as she sat for a moment thoughtful before re- 
plying. 

“ It seems odd, perhaps, but I have never 
wanted money very much. You see we have 
everything we need and many things we don’t 
really need, and I never think about money 
much, except at Christmas time. But I have 
never had more than ten dollars to spend at 
any one Christmas, and when you divide ten 
into fifteen or more parts, each part is pretty 
small. It’s just dreadful when I see a two-dol- 
lar present that’s just the very thing for some 
one, to have to let it go and think up a fifty-cent 
one. I shall save my money till Christmas and 
have a good time doing my shopping for once.” 

“ That’s just like you, Nell,” said Aggie. 
“ You are always so generous that you make 
me feel desperately selfish.” 


98 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


“ But that isn’t generosity,” replied Nell, 
“ it’s what I want to do. Generosity means 
sacrificing yourself and giving up something.” 

“ Oh, does it ? ” Aggie responded. “ Per- 
haps so for most of us. But you are so gener- 
ous that you do it like breathing. You don't 
sacrifice anything, because you wouldn’t ever 
dream of being selfish enough to let yourself 
want anything in the first place. Now I shall 
let Christmas take care of itself, and trust to 
saving up a few pennies by that time, but this 
fifty dollars is something special and I’m going 
to spend mine in a special way. I just feel fran- 
tic whenever I go inside the door of a book- 
store. Those shelves and tables piled with 
fresh new books with their uncut leaves, fairly 
make my head swim, and I’m wondering how 
many volumes fifty dollars will buy.” 

“ Well, Aggie dear, I’m sure that’s generous. 
If you buy books we can all read them, and 
that’s as good as having them ourselves,” said 
Nell. 

“ It isn’t the same for me,” Aggie answered. 
“ I love to look at a shelf of books and think, 
‘ they are mine, mine,’ and to straighten them 
and arrange them is a perfect delight. It is as 


SUNSHINE AFTER RAIN 


99 


if they were live friends and knew whether I 
touched them gently and lovingly, or tumbled 
them carelessly about. Yes, I shall spend mine 
for books.” 

“ Oh, dear, oh, dear,” cried Anne, “ do listen, 
Fan, to all that talk. Of course it’s awfully 
sweet of Nell to want to buy us all such lovely 
presents. Think how mean and stingy we’ll feel 
on Christmas morning when we give her the 
horrid little pincushions and home-made hand- 
kerchiefs which we shall have labelled with her 
name. Yes, Nell, you certainly are too good, 
but Aggie, you are positively extravagant! 
Fifty dollars for books! when you can buy a 
ticket to the town library for two dollars a 
year ! What are you thinking of ? Now a ring 
or two, a beautiful belt buckle, some lovely 
stocks or a silk petticoat, how much more 
sensible ! ” 

“ Or gloves,” chimed in Frances, perfectly 
in accord, as a twin sister should be. “ I have 
always thought how elegant it would be to have 
a dozen new pairs of gloves ahead, instead 
of being obliged to stop and sew up a rip or put 
a button on every time you go anywhere. I 
certainly shall spend a few dollars for gloves. 

L.of C. 




lOO 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


Polly, child, I suppose mother will have to take 
charge of your money, or you will spend it all 
for candy.” 

“ Indeed, I shall not,” replied Polly. “ I 
shall be the only sensible one of the family. We 
count Nell out, of course. None of us could 
be so good as Nell if we tried a year. Books 
are all right in their way. I think I know just 
how you feel, Aggie. Clothes, of course, we all 
have to wear, but mommie buys us all we need 
of those. I shall not buy any clothes. But do 
you think, girls, that fifty dollars would buy 
four dogs, if two of them were little puppies, 
an Angora cat, two mocking-birds and a 
parrot ? ” 

“ For goodness’ sake, Polly ! ” exclaimed 
Aggie, when she could speak for laughing, “ if 
you are going to start a menagerie like that, 
you will need an endowment fund for its sup- 
port!” 

Just at that point in the discussion, Mrs. 
Andrews, who had left the room some time be- 
fore, called from up-stairs, 

“ Oh, girls, do run out on the porch and see 
something interesting. It’s years since I have 


SUNSHINE AFTER RAIN 


IOI 


seen one of those old-fashioned tin peddlers 
about.” 

They all jumped to their feet and hurried 
out, in answer to their mother’s call. Polly 
had been sitting on the floor in the midst of a 
heap of doll things, so that she was the last to 
scramble to her feet. 

“ I don’t care what they say,” she said to her- 
self, as she followed the rest, “ live things are 
the best ! ” 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE VISIT OF THE TIN PEDDLER 

So engrossed had the girls become with 
their pleasant work indoors, and with the de- 
lightful event which had followed, that they 
had been quite oblivious to what was going on 
outdoors, and they now greeted the brilliant 
shining after rain with exclamations of joy and 
surprise as they swarmed down the front steps 
toward the gate, outside of which stood the tin 
peddler’s wagon. 

All the world seemed aglitter with the same 
bright gladness which shone in the faces of 
the happy girls. Every wet leaf surface retold 
the glowing message it had received from the 
sun, each blade of grass trembled and sparkled 
with its tiny burden of light, and the old ped- 
dler’s wagon seemed a part of it all, adorned 
as it was all about the sides and top and even 
underneath with festoons of shining tin buck- 
102 



“ ‘ OH, DO LET’S EACH BUY A TIN CUP. 



































THE VISIT OF THE TIN PEDDLER 105 

ets, basins, cups, and pans. The peddler him- 
self, a squat, swarthy man, with a red kerchief 
tied round his neck, added to the picturesque- 
ness of the scene. 

“ Oh, do let’s each buy a tin cup. I’m sure 
it’s going to stay cleared off now, and we can 
have our picnic soon. We shall need plenty 
of tin cups for that. Mother, mother,” called 
Anne, “ haven’t you enough rags so that we can 
buy some tins? Don’t you want a beautiful 
basin? ” 

“Yes, yes,” laughed her mother from the 
up-stairs window, where she stood watching 
them. “ Aggie, you run in to the closet under 
the back stairway. You’ll find two rag-bags 
there. One has cotton rags and the other 
woollen. Bring them both. Call Delia from 
the kitchen to help you with them.” 

The two soon came forth, each carrying a 
huge paper flour-sack stuffed with rags, and 
Aggie ran back a second time for a smaller 
one not yet quite filled. 

“ I brought all there were, so as to make good 
weight,” she said. “ Now, girls, select your 
cups. We must first pick out a good basin for 
mother, or perhaps she would like better this 


io 6 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


cake-tin. Oh, Nell, there’s the cup for you, 
that blue one at the top. It has ‘ Nellie ’ in 
lovely curly letters on the side.” 

“ And here’s one for Polly. See the appro- 
priate inscription, ‘ For a good child.’ Take it, 
Polly, and run in for a drink of milk,” Anne 
chattered merrily, as she clambered up on the 
side of the wagon, the better to inspect the 
wares. 

The peddler good-naturedly sorted over his 
stock, taking down one cup after another until 
all were suited. He then drove off down the 
road sounding his tin horn and calling, “ Rags 
— Rags,” while the girls formed a procession 
with Polly leading and wearing a big funnel 
inverted for a crown, and bore their trophies 
indoors. 

As they stood together in the sitting-room, 
gaily commenting upon and admiring each 
other’s cups, Aggie suddenly dropped hers, 
exclaiming with a sharp cry of dismay, “ Where 
is my money? ” 

“ Where can it be ? ” she went on, in great 
distress. “ I am sure I laid it on the table 
when we went out. Do help me find it. Don’t 
all stand there looking at me. Where is it ? ” 


THE VISIT OF THE TIN PEDDLER 107 

“ Why, dear, you must have put it in your 
pocket, or dropped it on the floor. It’s prob- 
ably here under some of these doll things.” 
Nell spoke in a reassuring tone and they all 
set to work hunting for the lost bill. But the 
most careful search failed to bring it to light. 

“ It certainly teaches one to be careful with 
fifty-dollar bills.” said Anne. “ Now I put 
mine right in my pocket at once. If you had 
only done that, Aggie ! ” 

“ Oh, it's very easy to talk,” replied Aggie, 
with an unwonted sharpness in her voice. “ Do 
you know,” and she stopped suddenly in her 
search, “ I believe I know where it is. Bills 
haven’t legs or wings to go away by them- 
selves. When I came in for those bags I met 
Delia just outside the sitting-room door. I 
thought it was odd she was there instead of 
in the kitchen, and now I think of it, she 
looked flustered when I ran in. Yes, the more 
I think of it, the more sure I am that she 
took it. Mother, you must search her.” 

“ My dear Aggie, hush, don’t speak so loud,” 
answered Mrs. Andrews. “ It is a serious 
thing to accuse any one of theft. I can’t think 
that Delia would do such a thing. She has 


io8 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


always been honest and faithful. You must 
think carefully where you put it. Only as a 
last resort can I think of suspecting or search- 
ing poor Delia.” 

The rest of the morning was spent in fruit- 
less searching, and it was a gloomy-looking 
family that gathered about the dinner-table. 
Aggie had fretted herself into a sick headache 
and could eat nothing. She was firmer than 
ever in her belief that Delia had stolen the 
bill, and even Mrs. Andrews began to have 
some doubts, as she observed how the usually 
voluble servant moved silently about the kitchen 
at her work. 

Polly, full of sympathy for her sister, ate 
but little dinner, and excusing herself early, 
went to the wood-shed to give her kitten a 
saucer of milk. The rest of the family had 
left the table and returned to the sitting-room 
when, after some time, she came back. She 
threw the door open and burst in upon the 
quiet family group in a state of vehement ex- 
citement. 

“ I think it is a shame ! I’m just as sorry for 
you as I can be, Aggie. Pm willing to give you 
my fifty dollars, if it will be any comfort, but 



“‘I’M JUST BROKEN-HEARTED, MISS POLLY, I AM.”’ 





















































































































THE VISIT OF THE TIN PEDDLER 


III 


I think you ought to be ashamed to accuse 
Delia of stealing it. When I went out in the 
wood-shed I found her sitting by the wash-tubs 
with her apron over her head, crying as hard 
as she could cry. I asked her what was the 
matter and she said, as well as she could for 
crying, ‘ Fm just broken-hearted, Miss Polly, 
I am. I heard Miss Aggie saying in the other 
room that I stole her money. I never stole any- 
thing in my life. Sure my poor old mother 
couldn’t give her children much, but she could 
teach us to be honest, and now how will I ever 
get another place with my character gone? 
Your ma, too, I hate to leave her, she’s always 
been that good and kind to a poor girl, helping 
me on washing-day, and knowing it was not 
my fault, but the oven’s, when the bread 
wouldn’t bake.’ I tell you, Aggie, I know she 
never took your money. I told her so, and I 
think, mother, you might go out and see her.” 

“ Yes, Polly, I will go and speak to her. 
We mustn’t accuse her unless we are sure.” 

“ But I tell you, mother, she didn’t do it. 
Fm sure she didn’t,” insisted Polly. 

“ Most likely she’s crying because she’s 


I 12 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


afraid,” said Aggie. “ Everything points to 
her being the guilty one.” 

“ I won’t believe it,” said Polly, bursting into 
tears herself. “ She wouldn’t do such a thing.” 
Then, dashing the tears from her eyes while 
her cheeks burned red with excitement, she ex- 
claimed, “ I’ll find that bill myself. You don’t 
any of you know, but I have a power that will 
make me able to find it, and if I don’t, you shall 
have mine, Aggie. But don’t you dare to say 
again that Delia took it. I’ll give you my bill 
now to hold for surety,” and she rushed to her 
mother’s writing-desk in the corner of the 
room, flung open a drawer, snatched out her 
own bill, put there for safety, tossed it into 
Aggie’s lap, and ran from the room. 

The astonishment and consternation which 
Polly left behind her were not greater than her 
own amazement at herself when, locking the 
door of her own room behind her, she faced 
the problem which she had set for herself. 

“ I have told them that I have the power to 
find it, and now I haven’t the least idea how to 
do it,” she thought. “ Oh, I wish I could talk 
to Ted. He said that if I followed his direc- 
tions the power would surely come, but I feel 


THE VISIT OF THE TIN PEDDLER I 1 3 

as helpless as if I were an only instead of a 
seventh daughter. But I must find it, I must ! ” 
and clasping her hands about her knee and 
shutting her eyes tightly, she rocked back and 
forth in her chair and thought and thought. 

Whether her cogitations had lasted five min- 
utes or an hour she could not have told, when, 
as in a vision before her closed eyes, she saw the 
lost bill, as crisp as when her mother had drawn 
it from the envelope, but slightly crumpled as if 
protesting against its strange environment. 
She could see it and all its surroundings, and 
yet her hands lay limp and powerless to stretch 
forth and grasp it. 

With a start she opened her eyes, exclaiming 
aloud, 

“ Why, of course that is where it is. How 
simple when you know. Why didn’t Aggie 
think of it herself? I must go at once and 
try to get it. But — I can’t. My power has 
helped me find it, but I can’t get it any more 
than if I didn’t know where it is. Oh, Ted, 
Ted, why aren’t you here? ” 

“ The magician has voiced her wish — the 
object of her desire appears,” spoke a deep, 


I 14 A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 

sepulchral voice outside her door. “ Polly, 
open the door this instant and let me in.” 

“ Oh, Ted, you dearest Ted. How did you 
get here? ” cried Polly, jerking the door open 
in haste and tumbling into her big cousin's 
arms. 

So absorbed had she been, that the commo- 
tion created down-stairs by his unexpected arri- 
val had not broken in upon her reveries. 

“ Oh, exams were over, though commence- 
ment doesn't come off till next week. My 
poor old head felt as empty as a cocoanut shell. 
I thought perhaps I had a crack in it some- 
where, but the doctor told me to get out and 
leave town. He said something about nervous 
prostration and overwork and a lot of other 
doctor talk that didn’t mean anything, but he 
looked so fierce I flew. They have been telling 
me down-stairs all about this terrible rumpus 
you’ve been making and your rash promises, 
so I thought I'd hurry up here. Have you 
found the lost bill yet ? ” 

“ Yes, I have, Ted. I know where it is, and 
you must go right off and get it.” 

“ / get it ? Goodness, Polly, how you startle 
one. Does that all-seeing eye of yours behold 


THE VISIT OF THE TIN PEDDLER I 1 5 

it concealed in the bottom of my trunk ? How 
did you know that Delia and I are accom- 
plices ? ” 

“ No, no, Ted, don’t be foolish, and I’ll tell 
you all about it. It’s just as plain as day,” and 
she proceeded to describe her “ vision ” and the 
line of thought which had led to its appearance. 

“ So many times, Ted, in those daily lessons, 
you told me to stop at the door of a room for 
one minute or two minutes and then write lists 
of what I saw, that I have got into a habit of 
looking into a room and then shutting my eyes 
and making a picture of it in my mind. Now, 
we all had our bills there in the sitting-room. 
No one had gone out after mother gave them 
to us, till she called us out to see a tin peddler 
who was passing. I was the last one to go out 
of the room, and when I reached the door, I 
looked back over my shoulder and made that 
kind of a picture in my head. I can shut my 
eyes and see it now. Right in front of the 
chair Aggie was sitting in, on the floor, was 
a little heap of red and blue flannel pieces. 
There were lots of things in that picture because 
we had been making doll-clothes, you know, but 
I can see them as if they were all lying here 


II 6 A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 

before me. When we came back, I was the 
first to come in, for we made a procession, and 
when I reached the door I looked to see if my 
mind picture was right. It was just the same 
except the pile of red and blue by Aggie’s 
chair. That was gone. Now who had 'taken 
it, and the bill with it? For probably Aggie 
had dropped it there when she jumped up. Ag- 
gie says Delia took it, but I believe Aggie her- 
self took it. She went into the house for the 
rag-bags. One wasn’t quite full; on her way 
through the room she probably gathered up a 
handful of rags and stuffed them in, together 
with the bill. She doesn’t remember doing it, 
I suppose, for we were calling her to hurry up. 
And now I can see that bill lying with the red 
and blue pieces in the top of the rag-bag, which 
is riding away with that old peddler, miles and 
miles from here.” 

When she had finished, Ted reached forth his 
hand. 

“ Shake, Polly, old fellow,” he said. “ I 
believe you are right. To be sure I don’t my- 
self see any visions of fifty-dollar bills. 
Would that I did ! ” and he shut his eyes and 
clutched the air frantically. “ But your course 


THE VISIT OF THE TIN PEDDLER 


7 


of reasoning is masterly. As a pupil of mine 
I have cause to be proud of you. There remains 
now only the simple task of proving your 
theory, of reaching forth our hands, seizing 
the peddler, and laying hold of the bill. Then 
will come the fireworks. Have you thought 
of that, Polly? We must teach the other 
girls a lesson. They must learn to respect 
your talent. Oh, this is fine! I feel that so- 
called nervous prostration slipping from me 
like an old coat. But no time should be lost. 
I must up and away ! ” 


CHAPTER IX. 


MYSTERIES 

Ordinarily it would have seemed strange 
for Ted to disappear and be gone for several 
hours on the very afternoon of his arrival, but 
Aggie was so enveloped in gloom over the loss 
of her money, which even his coming had failed 
to dispel,. and her sisters were so full of sym- 
pathy for her, that they scarcely noticed his 
absence. Polly came down from her room, and 
with a book betook herself to a favourite re- 
treat under an apple-tree in the back yard, evi- 
dently trying to evade the curious glances with 
which Anne and Frances greeted her. 

“ I declare, it gives me a creepy feeling to 
look at Polly,” Frances whispered to Anne. 
“ Did you see that sort of triumphant glitter in 
her eye? What do you suppose she meant 
when she said she has some kind of power? 
Wouldn’t it be dreadful if she should become 
118 


MYSTERIES 


HQ 

insane and have to be confined in an asylum! 
I suppose it would nearly kill mother.” 

“ Oh, don’t worry so, Fan. There’s noth- 
ing really the matter with her. It’s a sort 
of a temper she flies into sometimes. It is true, 
though, that she does seem to find things out 
in a curious way. I do hope that she or some- 
body will find that bill. I feel as if there had 
been a death in the family or something dread- 
ful had happened.” 

About half-past five in the afternoon Ted 
reappeared. He jumped from his bicycle and 
stopped awhile on the front porch to fan his 
flushed face and chaff the girls on their gloomy 
looks. He then went to the back yard, osten- 
sibly to clean his wheel, for he and Polly spent 
a full hour out under the apple-tree, screwing 
and unscrewing various parts of the bicycle, 
and wiping and polishing each part with bits 
of rag. However, if any one besides the pair 
of bluebirds, who had a nest in a hole in the 
branch overhead, could have heard the con- 
versation which took place, it would have been 
found that the remarks were not confined to the 
subject of bicycle repairs. 

“ I had an awful time, Polly,” Ted said, 


120 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


in a low tone, his head bent clown over the 
pedal he was adjusting, “ chasing up your 
old peddler. It wasn’t hard to get on his track, 
for every one in town had seen him and his 
jolly outfit. But he wandered about in the 
most ridiculous fashion, going up every cross- 
road and through every back alley in the town- 
ship. I had to follow him through them all, 
for fear I’d lose track of him. The farmers 
of this neighbourhood don’t keep up any fancy 
bicycle paths, I can tell you. Oh, the mud- 
holes and the sand-banks I have been through ! 
But I found him at last, and such a scared 
individual I never saw ! He must have a guilty 
conscience, for he seemed to size me up as a 
police officer or sheriff right away. I expected 
that he would object strongly to having me 
overhaul his rag-bags, and I can’t say I an- 
ticipated with any pleasure the savoury job. 
But, thanks to your careful description, I found 
the right bag at once, and your vision was all 
right, too, for there lay the bill right on top. 
Wouldn’t the old codger have been surprised 
if he had found it himself?” 

“ It’s perfectly splendid to have it come out 
right,” answered Polly, with smothered joy. 


MYSTERIES 


I 2 I 


“ Don’t you think I had better take it right 
in to Aggie now ? ” 

“ No, I don’t. Aggie needs a lesson. In 
the first place, she shouldn’t have been so quick 
to accuse Delia, and then she should have had 
a better memory herself. Besides, Polly, after 
all the trouble you and I have been to with your 
lessons all winter, we need a reward, and noth- 
ing will satisfy me so well as to make the hair 
rise up on the heads of my worthy cousins and 
their flesh to creep. I have a plan, and, if you 
will just polish diligently on the spokes of 
that front wheel, I will proceed to unfold it.” 

The task of putting the bicycle in order 
lasted until the tea-bell rang, and even then 
Ted and Polly left their work reluctantly. 

Ted had so much to tell of his school year, 
and he told it as usual in such a captivating 
manner, that after supper the family repaired 
in a body to the sitting-room, even Doctor 
Andrews lingering with the rest. 

“ Don’t light the lamps, mother, it is so 
much nicer to sit in the twilight and hear Ted 
tell stories,” Anne had said, as her mother 
started to bring in a light. 

The long June twilight still lingered when, 


122 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


a lull occurring in the talk, Aggie turned 
toward Polly and said, with a curious mixture 
in her voice of despair and mockery, and yet 
with a note that suggested almost a lurking 
hope, 

“ How about your promise to find my 
money? Will it take many weeks, do you 
think? ” 

Polly hesitated a moment or two before re- 
plying, and then unclasping her hands from 
around one knee, her favourite attitude, she 
leaned forward and began to speak slowly and 
in a low voice, though, as Frances told Anne 
afterward, “ her eyes shone almost like the 
cat’s eyes in the dark.” 

“ Perhaps you thought that I was excited 
or was joking when I said that I have a power 
that none of you know or understand. I may 
as well tell you now, what you all know of 
course, that I am ‘ a seventh daughter of a 
seventh daughter.’ ” Here her voice sank al- 
most to a whisper. “ Perhaps you do not know 
what that means — yet, but you will learn to 
know more and more.” 

Here Doctor Andrews straightened himself 
in his chair, and ejaculated, 


MYSTERIES 


123 


“ Bless me, Polly, child, what are you talk- 
ing about? ” 

“ Hush, uncle, let’s hear what she has to 
say,” said Ted, giving the doctor a nudge with 
his elbow, and at the same time softly pinching 
his Aunt Emmie’s arm, for she, too, had opened 
her mouth to speak. 

After a moment Polly went on, in a voice 
which trembled slightly, but which grew stead- 
ier as she progressed. 

“ This strange power which belongs to a 
‘ seventh daughter,’ I have begun to feel in 
this my fourteenth, or twice seventh year. 
Agnes,” using the name by which her sister 
was called only on solemn occasions, “ I prom- 
ised to find your money. I shall keep my 
promise. But in the display of this strange 
power certain mysteries must be gone through. 
Will you all draw your chairs together to form 
a circle — so? Let me see, yes, there are 
seven of you. That is lucky, for seven are 
needful. Now, please hold your hands in front 
of you, palms upward, while I examine them. 
The light is dim, to be sure, but the light of 
day is not necessary to the eye of magic.” 

Bending closely over each pair of hands, she 


24 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


went about the circle, and, after finishing each 
examination, she made a cross in the palm of 
the hand with a bit of charcoal, which she took 
from her pocket. This she did until she came 
to Aggie’s hands. Over these she paused for 
a longer time, muttering under her breath, 
“ This is strange, strange ! ” and finally made 
a black circle in each hand, instead of the cross 
which she had given to the others. 

Reaching once more into her pocket, she 
produced a spool of brilliant green embroidery 
silk. Retaining the spool in her own hand, 
she passed about the circle, slowly unwinding 
it and laying the silken thread across the open 
palms. Seven times she did this, repeating, in 
a low singsong as she went, 

“ Through seven palms and seven more 
The thread is carried o’er and o’er.” 

This done, she placed the spool on the floor 
in the middle of the circle, and, crossing her 
own hands over it, she said, in a deep, pro- 
phetic tone, 

“ And in this magic circle round 
What was lost shall now be found.” 

Slipping underneath the circling thread, she 
left the room for a moment, and returned bear- 


MYSTERIES 


125 


ing a small iron kettle, which she placed over 
the spool on the floor. She then removed the 
cork from a bottle which she held in one hand, 
and sprinkled its contents into the kettle. Im- 
mediately fumes of a strange odour greeted 
the nostrils of the onlookers, and in a moment 
more a flaring red light lit up every corner 
of the room, and showed the awe-stricken and 
almost frightened faces of the four girls, which 
did not grow calmer as they beheld the grave 
countenances of their parents, the diabolic grin 
on Ted’s face, and the tense, strained expres- 
sion in Polly’s eyes, as she peered eagerly into 
the faces around her, saying at the same time, 
“ By this flaring light I see 
All that in your minds may be.” 

Suddenly she stood erect, her height seem- 
ingly exaggerated by the long shadow which 
the light at her feet threw upward on the ceil- 
ing, and stretching out one arm and long fore- 
finger straight at Aggie, she exclaimed in an 
awful voice, 

“ Ah ! by you and you alone 
Is the dreadful secret known.” 

Then drawing closer and bending forward, 
she reached out her hand and apparently drew 


126 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


from within the cuff of Aggie’s shirt-waist a 
little roll, while she hissed between her teeth, 

“ Forth I draw the hidden bill, 

Explain, if now you can — and will! ” 

Unfolding the roll which she had extracted, 
she shook forth in the light, which still flared 
upward, the lost bill. 

“ What — what does it mean ! ” stammered 
Aggie. “ Where did that come from ? I don’t 
know anything about it,” and then, overcome 
by this sudden climax to the many and varied 
experiences of the day, she burst into tears. 

Mrs. Andrews and Nell both rushed to 
put comforting arms around her, while Anne 
hastened to light a lamp, saying as she did SO' : 

“ I suppose all this is just some of Ted’s 
and Polly’s nonsense. Don’t cry, Aggie.” 
But down in her heart she felt convinced that 
there was more to it than mere nonsense. After 
she and Frances went to bed that night, they 
lay and rehearsed the events of the evening 
until they worked themselves into a fit of nerv- 
ous fear, which did not subside until they 
arose, lighted a lamp, and consumed half a 
box of mixed candies which Ted had distrib- 
uted as propitiatory offerings. 


CHAPTER X. 


THE TRIUMPH OF MAGIC 

Though Polly, like every good sorceress, 
declined to expose the secrets of her profession, 
the family gradually settled down to the con- 
clusion at which Anne had jumped at once, 
that Cousin Ted had connived with her in the 
practice of the black art. Aggie, however, 
could not shake off the impression which she 
had received of being personally guilty in some 
mysterious way. 

“ I suppose it was wrong of me to accuse 
Delia — poor old soul — of stealing it,” she 
said. 

Aggie’s strict sense of justice always caused 
her to deal as severely with her own faults as 
with those of others, and so, to ease her con- 
science, she sacrificed the main architectural 
feature of the air-castle she had built On the 
foundation of her fifty-dollar gift, and insisted 
127 


128 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


upon giving half of it to Delia. She, poor 
thing, was so overwhelmed with such mag- 
nanimity that she was rendered speechless for 
a whole day. 

A few evenings later, the family sat on the 
vine-covered porch, enjoying the balmy sum- 
mer air, laden with the odour of honeysuckle. 

Mrs. Andrews, who had been rocking back 
and forth silently for a time, sajd, as she gave 
a long sigh, 

“ I wish, Polly, that your famous power as 
a c seventh daughter ’ could bring out of the 
past something which was lost to me many 
years ago.” 

“ Oh, mommie ! ” exclaimed Polly, eagerly, 
“ is there a story you never have told us ? How 
splendid! Do let’s hear it. But wait till I 
get a hassock, so I can sit at your feet and put 
my head on your knee,” and she added, in a 
regretful tone, “ you know I’m too big to sit 
in your lap any more.” 

“ Yes, auntie, do go ahead. If I’m not mis- 
taken, I detect a dramatic note in your voice. 
Give us something thrilling,” and Ted doubled 
up a porch cushion for a pillow and stretched 
himself at full length on the top step. 


THE TRIUMPH OF MAGIC 


129 


“ I don’t know whether I ought to tell you 
this story,” Mrs. Andrews began slowly. “ It 
may make you restless and discontented. I was 
unhappy myself for a long time after it hap- 
pened, but I settled down to the inevitable a 
good many years ago. You all know how your 
father and I have dreamed of some day buying 
back the big house where I lived as a girl and 
in my early married life. But you do not know 
that the house really belongs to me, or rather, 
was given to me in a will which was lost or 
never found.” 

“ Why, mother ! ” spoke Aggie, quickly, “ I 
thought there was no will, that Uncle David 
never made one, though you knew he wanted 
you to have the house.” 

“ No,” Mrs. Andrews went on. “ He made 
a will and it was lost. We knew the terms of 
it; indeed, we saw the document often, for 
uncle kept it in a little drawer of his desk. 
Frequently, in the last weeks of his life, he 
used to ask for it, and he would sit and hold 
it in his hand hours at a time. The day before 
the last stroke that ended his life came, I had 
helped him out to his favourite seat in a big 
armchair on the veranda. He sat looking 


130 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


out over the lawn at the beautiful elm-trees a 
long time. I was sitting beside him sewing. 
He turned his head and watched me a few 
moments, and then said, ‘ You love this house 
and those elms, don’t you, Emmie? Just as 
much as I do ? ’ ‘ Surely, uncle, this is home, 

and it has ever been the dearest of homes,’ I 
answered. ‘Won’t you bring my will?’ he 
asked, and to humour him I brought it out. 
He smoothed it over his knee and said, sol- 
emnly, ‘ Take care of this, Emmie, for this 
makes the house yours, the house — and the 
elms.’ Dear uncle, he was as attached to those 
elms as if they were human beings, and used 
to love to sit under them in the spring when 
they showered their silver discs upon him like 
a snow-storm. 

“ I was called away that afternoon, and left 
him sitting there. Your mother, Ted, was 
visiting us, and late in the afternoon she helped 
him back to his room. That night he was 
stricken, and, though he lingered till the next 
day, he never spoke to us again, except to ask 
in a broken way for his chair. He never could 
bear to be considered sick, and wanted to sit 
up even to the end. 


THE TRIUMPH OF MAGIC I 3 1 

“ Afterward, when we came to look for the 
will and could not find it, it was discovered 
that no one had ever seen it after the time 
I left him sitting with it on the porch. When 
your mother helped him into the house, it had 
disappeared. We searched the porch and yard 
carefully, thinking the wind might have carried 
it out of his hands. He could not walk alone, 
so it was impossible for him to have taken it 
indoors, though, of course, we looked the house 
over. His nephew, who inherited the property 
by law, insisted that he probably had destroyed 
it, but remembering his last conversation with 
me, I can never believe that. However, the 
will never came to light, and we were obliged 
to move.. His nephew was not an unkind man, 
and allowed me to keep all the old-fashioned 
furniture with which I had grown up and cared 
for so much. ,, 

“ Oh, mother, if we could only find the 
will ! ” said Anne, breathlessly, as her mother 
ceased speaking. 

“ There, hush, dear. That was what I was 
afraid of. You mustn’t let your mind dwell 
on it. Uncle David died twenty years ago, 
and it would take more than the magic power 


132 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


of a ‘ seventh daughter ’ to find the will now,” 
and Mrs. Andrews laughed softly and patted 
Polly’s cheek. 

Polly put up her hand and held that of her 
mother close against her face. 

“ Poor mommie ! it must have been hard 
to move away and give up those elm-trees. 
That was worse than leaving the house, wasn’t 
it?” 

“ Yes, dear, that was the hardest of all,” 
replied her mother, surprised that her little 
daughter had divined so clearly the one feature 
of the loss which still sent occasional aching 
throbs through her heart. 

“ Yes, the very hardest,” she repeated, “ for 
a house is but a dead thing at the best, but 
a tree is a living being, and greets its owner 
each spring with a fresh message.” 

The next morning Polly spent a longer time 
than usual in brushing out her curling locks, 
which had now reached the dignity of braids. 
She stood before the mirror, but looked with 
dreamy eyes past the attractive reflection there, 
seeing it not at all. She was thinking over 
her mother’s story and picturing in her mind 
the scene, which her mother had described, 


THE TRIUMPH OF MAGIC 


133 


of her last conversation with Uncle David. 
As she stood there before the dressing-table, 
she seemed to see the old silvery-haired man 
leaning back in his great chair, she heard again 
his request for the will, and his words of cau- 
tion to her mother. Imagination took up the 
thread of the story, broken by the message 
which had called her mother suddenly from 
his side. The picture in her mind was so vivid, 
and her imagination so active that she seemed 
to see every movement of the old man, and 
almost to read the thoughts which passed 
through his mind. Drowsy with the warm 
summer air, he longed to close his eyes and 
sleep, but the will which he held in his hand, 
what could he do with that? It must be put 
in a safe place, lest the wind blow it away. 
No one heard his feeble call for assistance; 
he was too helpless to rise and walk alone — 
At this point Polly dropped the brush. It 
fell with a little clatter among the articles on 
the dressing-table. She brushed her hand 
across her eyes, as if to recall herself to her 
surroundings. She looked about the room for 
a moment, then walked rapidly and directly to 
a great blue denim-covered chair which stood 


34 


A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 


by the window. She kneeled beside it and 
tore at its coverings with her hands. Failing 
in her efforts, she went to the table, picked 
up her nail-file and scissors, returned to the 
chair, and with much difficulty succeeded at 
last in prying out a few of the tacks which 
held the denim covering securely in place. 
Then with feverish haste she took hold of the 
loosened edge and jerked at it until the whole 
arm, with its worn haircloth under covering, 
was exposed to view. Her eager fingers sought 
a slit just under the bend of the arm, and 
reaching into it as far as her hand would allow, 
she fumbled long in the hair and sawdust. 

A look of keen disappointment passed over 
her face as she withdrew her hand and sat on 
the floor gazing at the chair. But her eyes 
brightened again after a moment’s thought, 
and seizing her scissors, she enlarged the rent 
in the haircloth until she was able to intro- 
duce her whole arm and explore to the very 
bottom of the deep side. A red flush mounted 
to her face as she withdrew her hand this time, 
for in it she beheld a folded paper, yellowed 
and stained with time. 

Scrambling to her feet, regardless of her 


THE TRIUMPH OF MAGIC 


135 


tumbled hair, which fell about her flushed face, 
and her dressing-robe with ribbons untied and 
flying, she flew down the stairs and burst into 
the dining-room, where the family were assem- 
bling for breakfast. 



“ Oh, mommie, here it is — the chair, you 
know,” and she flung her arms around her 
mother’s neck, much to that lady’s confusion 
and astonishment. 

“ What is the matter, child ; have you gone 
crazy? How you are tumbling me! ” she ex- 
claimed, as soon as she could get her breath. 


136 A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 

“ It’s the will, mother, the will,” she cried, 
shoving the now crumpled document in front 
of her mother’s eyes. 

It was Mrs. Andrews’s turn to flush, turn 
pale, and clutch at her chair-back to keep from 
falling. 

There is no knowing what would have hap- 
pened if Ted had not come just then to the 
rescue. Taking the paper from his aunt’s 
trembling hand, he gave it a hurried glance, 
then mounting a chair, he shouted over the hub- 
bub of voices around him, 

“ Quiet, please, while I announce that the 
long-lost will has come to light at last, pro- 
duced by the magic power of this our ‘ seventh 
daughter.’ Let us proceed to give three cheers 
for Polly, and then we will hear her story.” 

The three cheers that followed were not the 
less hearty because they were rendered broken 
and halting by the mixture of laughter and 
tears in the voices which produced them. 

“ It is not magic this time, Ted,” expos- 
tulated Polly, when they had all calmed down 
a little and turned to her for an explanation. 
“ It’s just pure accident. I was thinking about 
mother’s story, and I went on imagining what 


THE TRIUMPH OF MAGIC 


137 


Uncle David did after mother left him; how 
he probably wanted to sleep, and tried to put 
the will in a safe place. And then in a flash 
I remembered that the chair which mother cov- 
ered for my room this spring was one which 
came out of the attic. She told me when I 
asked her to let me have it in my room that 
it was Uncle David’s favourite chair, and she 
had never before felt like using it. While she 
was covering it, I noticed a torn slit in the 
haircloth. And when I thought of the chair, 
and how perhaps he had slipped the will in 
there to keep it safe during his nap, I remem- 
bered that mother said he never spoke after 
his last stroke, except to say 4 chair.’ Don’t 
you suppose, mommie, he was trying to tell you 
where the will was, instead of asking to sit 
up, as you thought ? ” 

44 Surely, Polly, it must have been that. I 
wonder we never thought of it before, for he 
tried to make his lips say 4 chair ’ over and 
over till a few moments before he died, and 
never seemed satisfied. Poor Uncle David ! ” 
The tears came to Mrs. Andrews’s eyes, as 
she looked tenderly around upon her flock, and 


I38 A SEVENTH DAUGHTER 

then she drew Polly toward her and kissed 
her. 

“ No more tears,” cried out Ted. “ This 
is too good to cry about. But I still insist that 
it was Polly’s magical power which found the 
will, and she won’t mind if I tell you a little 
of the secret of that power which helped her 
to find your money, Aggie, and to do all those 
unaccountable things about which you wrote 
while I was away. Though in these modern 
times we sometimes scoff at magic, there is 
nothing which produces more magical results 
than the power of close observation and the 
cultivated ability to put two and two together. 
And the best of it is that not only ‘ seventh 
daughters,’ but all daughters and sons, * sisters 
and cousins and aunts,’ can acquire it if they 
try. But Polly has begun her lessons so early 
in life that she has a great start over the rest 
of us. Try as we may, we can never catch up 
with her, and she will continue ever to be our 
‘ seventh daughter.’ ” 

Putting one arm around Polly and the other 
around his aunt, he bestowed a kiss upon each, 
and cried again, 

“ Now hip, hip, hurrah ! once and again, for 


THE TRIUMPH OF MAGIC 


139 


the talented ‘ seventh daughter ’ of the most 
delightful and dearest ‘ seventh daughter ’ in 
the world.” 

And they all hurrahed. 























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COSY CORNER SERIES 


It Is the intention of the publishers that this series shall 
contain only the very highest and purest literature, — 
stories that shall not only appeal to the children them- 
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them in their joys and sorrows, — stories that shall be 
most particularly adapted for reading aloud in the 
family circle. 

The numerous illustrations in each book are by well- 
known artists, and each volume has a separate attract- 
ive cover design. 

Each, i vol., i6mo, cloth . $0.50 

By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON 

The Little Colonel. 

The scene of this story is laid in Kentucky. Its 
heroine is a small girl, who is known as the Little 
Colonel, on account of her fancied resemblance to an 
old-school Southern gentleman, whose fine estate and 
old family are famous in the region. This old Colonel 
proves to be the grandfather of the child. 

The Giant Scissors. 

This is the story of Joyce and of her adventures in 
France, — the wonderful house with the gate of The 
Giant Scissors, Jules, her little playmate, Sister Denisa, 
the cruel Brossard, and her dear Aunt Kate. Joyce is 
a great friend of the Little Colonel, and in later volumes 
shares with her the delightful experiences of the “ House 
Party ” and the “ Holidays.” 


2 


L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY'S 


By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON (Continued) 

Two Little Knights of Kentucky, 

Who Were the Little Colonel’s Neighbors. 

In this volume the Little Colonel returns to us like an 
old friend, but with added grace and charm. She is 
not, however, the central figure of the story, that place 
being taken by the “ two little knights,” Malcolm and 
Keith, little Southern aristocrats, whose chivalrous na- 
tures lead them through a series of interesting adven- 
tures. 

Cicely and Other Stories for Girls. 

The readers of Mrs. Johnston’s charming juveniles 
will be glad to learn of the issue of this volume for 
young people, written in the author’s sympathetic and 
entertaining manner. 

Big Brother. 

A story of two boys. The devotion and care of 
Steven, himself a small boy, for his baby brother, is the 
theme of the simple tale, the pathos and beauty of 
which has appealed to so many thousands. 

Ole Mammy’s Torment. 

“Ole Mammy’s Torment” has been fitly called “a 
classic of Southern life.” It relates the haps and mis- 
haps of a small negro lad, and tells how he was led by 
love and kindness to a knowledge of the right 

The Story of Dago. 

In this story Mrs. Johnston relates the story of Dago* 
a pet monkey, owned jointly by two brothers. Dago 
tells his own story, and the account of his haps and mis- 
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COSY CORNER SERIES 


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By EDITH ROBINSON 

A Little Puritan’s First Christmas : 

A Story of Colonial Times in Boston. 

A story of Colonial times in Boston, telling how 
Christmas was invented by Betty Sewall, a typical child 
of the Puritans, aided by her “ unregenerate ” brother, 
Sam. 

A Little Daughter of Liberty. 

The author’s motive for this story is well indicated 
by a quotation from her introduction, as follows : 

“ One ride is memorable in the early history of the 
American Revolution, the well-known ride of Paul 
Revere. Equally deserving of commendation is another 
ride, — untold in verse or story, its records preserved 
only in family papers or shadowy legend, the ride of 
Anthony Severn was no less historic in its action or 
memorable in its consequences.” 

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A delightful and interesting story of Revolutionary 
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renders important services to George Washington and 
Alexander Hamilton, and in the end becomes the wife of 
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A Little Puritan Rebel. 

Like Miss Robinson’s successful story of “ A Loyal 
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A Little Puritan Pioneer. 

The scene of this story is laid in the Puritan settle- 
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A Dog of Flanders : a Christmas Story. 
Too well and favorably known to require description. 

The Niirnberg Stove. 

This beautiful story has never before been published 
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A Provence Rose. 

A story perfect in sweetness and in grace. 

Pindelkind. 

A charming story about a little Swiss herdsman. 

By MISS MULOCK 

The Little Lame Prince. 

A delightful story of a little boy who has many adven- 
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Adventures of a Brownie. 

The story of a household elf who torments the cook 
and gardener, but is a constant joy and delight to the 
children who love and trust him. 

His Little Mother. 

Miss Mulock’s short stories for children are a constant 
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this new and attractive dress, will be welcomed by hosts 
of youthful readers. 

Little Sunshine’s Holiday. 

An attractive story of a summer outing. “ Little Sun- 
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which Miss Mulock is so justly famous. 


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